Georges Seurat, 1859-1891: The Master of Pointillism Book

A competent and affordable introduction to the life, work and impact of the artist, the inventor of the Pointillist style of painting. it's slightly irritating that the text is often discussing a painting reproduced several pages away, but - y'know, books in this series don't cost more than some paperback novels, so don't be complaining too hard...

Seurat had a number of important influences, including the contemporary Impressionists, but perhaps the most significant were not artists but scientists. He absorbed all the latest theories of colour and used them to develop the extraordinary effects of Pointillism - paintings composed entirely of dots of colour - usually of unmixed, single pigment paints, relying on proximity of dots and distance of the observer to create mixed colours in the eye, which the science had demonstrated gave a brighter, less muddy colour effect.

Oddly, his genius was better recognised during his lifetime than in the immediate aftermath: Thirty or so years after his death, The Metropolitan Museum of Art turned down the purchase of one of his greatest works - it was bought instead by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it still hangs. Now, of course, he's considered to have been exceptional and a sad loss, dying young, but leaving a huge impact on the development of Western art - the second step towards Abstract art after the original Impressionists. It's a pity that no sane format of book can ever really do justice to the Pointillist technique when fully reproducing even modestly sized paintings, but this gives you an idea - go see the real things if you ever have opportunity.