Ouvriers Enfonçant Des Pieux c. 1882

Georges Seurat created Ouvriers Enfonçant Des Pieux with paint in France. This unassuming painting offers a window into the social realities of late 19th-century France. At first glance, it is a scene of laborers at work, but look closer and you can notice Seurat's pointillist technique. Instead of blending colors on a palette, he applied small, distinct dots of color, encouraging the viewer's eye to do the mixing. Consider the context in which Seurat made this painting. France was undergoing rapid industrialization, and class divisions were becoming more pronounced. How might this context have influenced Seurat's artistic choices? Was he commenting on the plight of the working class, or simply observing the changing social landscape around him? Historians can use the artwork to discover elements of the social and institutional contexts that shaped its creation. We might turn to archival materials, such as letters, exhibition reviews, and other period sources to better understand the forces that influenced Seurat and his contemporaries. By doing so, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the ways in which art both reflects and shapes the world around us.