During Seurat’s life, paints were made from powdered pigments. These substances were made from plants, colorful minerals, and even ground-up insects. Pigmented paint came in pure hues such as red, yellow, green, or blue. Artists mixed lighter tints by adding white or darker shades by adding black.
Seurat studied how pure hues were arranged on the color wheel, above. It shows the primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—and the secondary colors made by mixing them. Pairs of complementary colors, like blue and orange, appear across from each other. Seurat believed colors were more powerful when used side by side with their complements.
In 1881, Seurat read about experiments with spinning discs that were painted multiple colors. When the discs spun fast enough, a viewer’s eye couldn’t distinguish the sections and the colors seemed to blend. Seurat used this effect, called optical color mixing, in his paintings.
But instead of moving the image, he used many dots of pure color too small for the eye to tell apart from afar.