Review by Choice Review
One of the better popular volumes on this artist, combining an accurate and cogent introductory essay with good color plates. This bibliography on Georges-Pierre Seurat, the French artist whose career spanned only the decade of the 1880s, is extensive and unusually competent. It includes an oeuvre catalog by Cesar M. de Hauke (Seurat et son oeuvre, 1961), several important exhibition catalogs, and studies by leading 19th-century scholars John Rewald (Seurat, 1949) and Robert Herbert (Seurat's Drawings, 1962). This wealth of materials is characteristic of the artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras and still does not yet seem to have reached its saturation point. Thus, Courthion's book on Seurat cannot be said to fill a gap or to have contributed new research, but it is not without its virtues. For those general readers primarily interested in a picture book on this fascinating artist, and a brief and basic discussion of his life and work, this volume can be recommended. A thorough bibliography included at the end of the text points the way to further research. It must be mentioned, however, that the annotations to the plates are unusually uninformative and blithe, at their worst. This is the only disappointment in a book that is essentially satisfying if expectations are appropriate. -D. J. Johnson, Rhode Island School of Design
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
