Still Life with Hat, Parasol, and Clothes on a Chair

Still Life with Hat, Parasol, and Clothes on a Chair is a powerful drawing created by Georges Seurat in 1887. Executed during the peak of Seurat’s Neo-Impressionist period, this piece showcases his refined mastery of black and white composition. Unlike his famous oil paintings utilizing Pointillism, this drawing employs Conté crayon, allowing the artist to manipulate texture and darkness with precision. The addition of subtle white gouache highlights key areas, lending the drawing a heightened sense of volume and dramatic contrast.

The composition centers on domestic objects clustered upon a chair, a genre study typical of the still life tradition. Prominently featured are accessories of the late nineteenth century, including a gentleman's hat and a folded parasol. Seurat utilizes the granular quality of the Conté crayon to create rich, velvety shadows. He often applied this technique, known as dessins au Conté, to study arrangements of light and form before embarking on larger canvases. The interplay between the deep blacks and the stark white paper is characteristic of Seurat’s graphic work, transforming mundane items like clothes draped over the furniture into subjects of structural intensity.

This drawing demonstrates the artist’s commitment to formal experimentation and offers intimate insight into the material culture of the era. The work is classified as a drawing and is part of the extensive collection of sheets and studies housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Given its status and historical importance, high-resolution prints of Seurat’s graphic work are often made available through public domain initiatives, ensuring widespread access to this remarkable example of Post-Impressionist drawing.