Georges Seurat (1859–1891) was born Georges-Pierre Seurat on 2 December 1859 in Paris, into a well-off family. From 1875 he took a course with the sculptor Justin Lequien, and in 1878 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, in the class of Henri Lehmann, a pupil of Ingres. He left in November 1879 for a year of military service, which ended his formal training.
His first major painting, Bathers at Asnières (1883–84), was rejected by the Paris Salon and shown instead at the Salon of the Independent Artists in 1884. He then began A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86), now in the Art Institute of Chicago, which launched Neo-Impressionism. Building on contemporary colour theory, he applied small dots of pure colour that blend in the viewer’s eye, a method known as Pointillism or Divisionism. Paul Signac became his chief follower.
Seurat died in Paris on 29 March 1891, at the age of 31, shortly after catching a chill during an exhibition of his work.