Image: Seurat’s great work. Oil on Canvas, 1884.

A few months back, we started a practice of highlighting a piece of art on Saturdays.  We also fell into a naming convention for the posts, saying it was Saturday in the museum with (insert first name of the artists).  It has turned into a fun piece of running the site, to find a work of art and do a little research on the artist.  Or at least enough research to figure out their first name.

That title format is a riff on Stephen Sondheim’s famous musical, Sunday in the Park with George.  Sondheim was, in turn, referencing George Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.

Seurat was born December 2, 1859, so to mark his birthday this past week it seemed appropriate to post the piece of work that was the inspiration for our title format.

The piece is held by the Art Institute of Chicago.  This is how they describe it:

“Inspired by research in optical and color theory, he juxtaposed tiny dabs of colors that, through optical blending, form a single and, he believed, more brilliantly luminous hue. To make the experience of the painting even more intense, he surrounded the canvas with a frame of painted dashes and dots, which he, in turn, enclosed with a pure white wood frame, similar to the one with which the painting is exhibited today. The very immobility of the figures and the shadows they cast makes them forever silent and enigmatic.”

These art posts are a diversion from this site’s primary goal, which is to help you find a great place to eat if you are in Washington, D.C.  Our dining guide has more than 200 places that you can sort by cuisine, neighborhood, and/or rating!  In both MAP or LIST format.

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