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A young peasant boy, silent and immobile against a simple grass background, ignores the scene before him. He is like an island of dark and brooding in the midst of the glory of the strong sunshine that floods the landscape surrounding him. The high horizon, the sheer depth of the pictorial space and the placing of the boy to the far right of the composition contribute to a feeling of awkwardness that emphasises the solitude of the boy. To depict the grass Seurat has used criss-crossing brushstrokes over a smoother initial layer. The grass is painted in green – light and yellowish in the sunlight, darker in the shadows. Seurat uses touches of yellows and oranges to describe the sunlight, with touches of blue and mauve in the shadows. Seurat did not intend this painting as a naturalistic scene of rural life.