Village Road by Georges Seurat

The dark shadow along the bottom of the picture is a formula that Seurat used, most famously in La Grande Jatte and its studies. At first it can be ignored, but after a moment its saturated blues draw our attention. When we link it with the foliage in the upper right, we realize that the painter has situated us under a tree. This is a marginal retention of a device used by Théodore Rousseau and other Barbizon painters, who often framed a vista in foliage and shadow. By using this schema, but greatly diminishing its extent, Seurat emphasized its structural function more than its representational raison d'être. Furthermore, his preoccupation with color-light meant that he gave his shadow a nearly autonomous existence.

Where it crosses the dirt road, it is blue and orangish brown, but atop the grass it is blue, dark green, and purple. The brown, as usual largely formed of the warm color of the wood, is conspicuous in the lower third of the panel. It constitutes the basic tone of the distant buildings and also of the rectangular plantings on the other side of the road.

John Rewald has conjectured that Paul Signac acquired this panel as one of several works he exchanged with Vollard in 1898 for a still life by Cézanne.