Behind the Scenes of Seurat's Process 🎨 | The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea

Why It Matters

Confirming Seurat’s on‑site technique validates the sketch’s authenticity and guides conservation, while illustrating how scientific analysis can reshape art‑historical narratives.

Key Takeaways

• Seurat painted seascapes on-site using portable travel paint box.
• 1890 Gravelines sketch captures abstract beach with merged sea sky.
• Researchers employed X‑ray, infrared, pigment analysis to study technique.
• Microscopy revealed sand particles embedded in paint confirming outdoor work.
• Dot application and pigment fading provide insight into Seurat’s method.

Summary

The Griffin Catalyst exhibition’s video pulls back the curtain on Georges Seurat’s on‑site painting practice, spotlighting an oil sketch he completed in the summer of 1890 on the sandy shores of Gravelines. The work, a compact panel rendered with Seurat’s portable travel paint box, captures an abstracted beach where sea and overcast sky meld into a single tonal field.

Curators and conservators, led by Karen, applied scientific tools—X‑ray radiography, infrared imaging, and pigment analysis—to dissect the sketch’s material composition. These methods confirmed the absence of an underlying drawing, identified the specific pigments Seurat employed, and mapped the precise placement of his characteristic dots.

Microscopic examination revealed minute grains of sand literally trapped in the paint, corroborating the claim that the panel was painted outdoors. The analysis also noted subtle fading of red pigments and variations in dot application, offering concrete evidence of Seurat’s technique and the work’s aging process.

The findings enrich understanding of Seurat’s plein‑air methodology, bolster provenance verification, and inform future conservation strategies. By marrying art history with scientific inquiry, the project underscores how technical research can deepen appreciation of iconic modernist practices.

Original Description

Explore Georges Seurat’s The Beach at Gravelines (1890) in the Courtauld's collection, with Dr Karen Serres, Senior Curator of Paintings, and Dr Aviva Burnstock, Professor of Conservation.

We lift the painting out of its ornate frame to discover what technical research and x-ray imaging can reveal about Seurat's technique and materials, how he painted his seascapes on location, and what this tells us about the way he created his seascapes all along the Normandy coast.

Book now for Seurat and the Sea: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-seurat-and-the-sea/

Until 17 May 2026