Ville d'Avray, maisons blanches

This is early Seurat, painted in 1882 when he was in his early twenties and still years away from the dot-by-dot technique that would make his name. He went out to Ville-d'Avray, a village just west of Paris, and the choice was no accident. This was Corot's country, where the older landscape painter had kept a family home and worked for decades. Seurat had studied Corot closely, and here he is learning from him directly, painting plain white farmhouses seen across a sunlit field, the forms simplified almost to blocks while the colour stays subtle and worked. He made a small group of these landscapes in villages tied to Corot, among them Barbizon and Mortefontaine.