Capturing the Night

The road ~ La routeYears ago, when Rapunzel and I shared a house, I would spend most of my time drawing in the sunroom we called a studio at the back of the house. I worked mostly in pastels: soft pastels, oils, and also compressed charcoal and conté. I particularly loved doing my night drawings: paper so densely covered in black that one could barely make out the scene. It was ‘night’ I was trying to capture.

My then boyfriend suggested I look at the drawings of Georges Seurat (1859-1891). I managed to track down a single paperback book through the Amazon marketplace: The Drawings of Georges Seurat, published by Dover in 1971.

‘The drawings are done not so much for line as for the atmosphere’ – Gustave Kahn

The cat ~ Le chatSeurat is of course famous for his pointillist paintings, particularly his riverbank scene: Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte, painted when he was just 26. These drawings are quite different. They are heavy with charcoal applied vigorously to large areas, leaving hints of light along the contours, and revealing his subject lurking in the dim light. ‘The drawings’, Gustave Kahn states in an essay written in 1928, ‘are done not so much for line as for the atmosphere.’

If his paintings capture the sparkling light of the day, his drawings do indeed encapsulate that shifting play of disappearing light at dusk, investing its subject with mystery. 

Wheat and trees ~ Blé et arbresWoman reading ~ Femme lissantAt the ‘Concert Européen’ ~ Au Concert Européen