Painter. He gained fame as a 19th-century French painter who was the innovator of pointillism as a style of painting, a new quasi-scientific technique for portraying the play of light using tiny dots of brushstrokes of contrasting colors. He was the founder of the French school of Neo-Impressionism. His most famous oil-on-canvas painting of well-dressed ladies strolling along the banks of the River Seine, "Sunday on the Island of Grand-Jatte," became the basis of the 1984 Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim. Starting in 1884, he painted "Sunday on the Island of Grand-Jatte" in three stages, finishing in 1886. Born one of three children of an upper-class family, he spent much time in his family's cottage garden painting as a young boy. His uncle led him to painting. By 1875, he was taking classes with a sculptor before officially entering the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878, in the class of Henri Lehmann. Seurat studied the old masters in the Musée du Louvre. At the age of twenty, he went to Brest for his military service and drew the sea, beaches, and boats, before returning to Paris. He developed a science of his method of painting and rented a studio with other artists near the Moulin Rouge. After being refused by the jury to have his panel paintings "Une Baignade, Asnières" be exhibited, he formed the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants, a means to bypass the jury to exhibit paintings. In December of 1884, he exhibited the "Baignade." After having his paintings exhibited in other prominent places including New York City, Seurat participated in the 1889 Salon des Indépendants, exhibiting landscapes. His success quickly propelled him to the forefront of the Parisian avant-garde. During his eighth exhibition with Artistes Indépendants, he caught a chill and developed "infectious angina." Before the exhibition was ended, he suddenly died on Easter Sunday of 1891 at the age of 31. From a relationship, he had a son, which he legally acknowledged. He was buried in the family's vault. He is recognized as an outstanding painter of his era, leaving upon his death his seven monumental paintings, 40 smaller paintings and sketches, about 500 drawings, and several sketchbooks. Though less famous than his paintings, he has a collection of Conte Crayon drawings. A shy but extremely disciplined man, his method of painting definitely marked Western art. Since 1923, his famous painting, "Sunday on the Island of Grand-Jatte," is exhibited in a white frame at the Art Institute of Chicago. In November of 2022, his 1888 painting of three nudes, "Les Poseuses," broke a record at Christie's Auction of New York City when it sold for just over $149.2 million.