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A hard-to-find, large puzzle featuring Seurat's wonderful art

2019 WHITE MOUNTAIN LA GRANDE JATTE 1000 PIECE JIGSAW PUZZLE (24X30)

DETAILS:

Complete it, frame it like a painting, hang it, and enjoy!

Introducing the 2019 La Grande Jatte 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle by White Mountain - the ultimate challenge for art enthusiasts and puzzle lovers alike!

Prepare yourself for an immersive journey into the world of pointillism, as you recreate this stunning artwork piece by piece. The intricate pointillist art style adds an extra dimension of difficulty, making this puzzle a true test of patience and skill but the sense of accomplishment upon completing this masterpiece will be unparalleled.
And the completed puzzle would look great framed, appearing more interesting and unique than a print.

Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte "depicts the leisure-time experience of the Paris bourgeoisie in the mid 1880’s as they assemble on an island park in the middle of the Seine River just to the North of Paris’s city limits. During Seurat’s lifetime, the island was a popular suburban retreat frequented by artists, scientists, actors, and high-class prostitutes....The finished work pictures a typical sunny Sunday afternoon in the park and includes 48 Parisians gathered to escape the heat of the city. Seurat also included three dogs, a monkey, a butterfly, eight boats, and five parasols."

Crafted with utmost precision and attention to detail, this USA-made puzzle from White Mountain is a testament to quality and excellence. Manufactured in 2019, it has quickly become a rare and collectible item in the puzzle world, sought after for its rarity and larger size. Measuring a generous 24" x 30" (61cm x 76cm), this puzzle is not only a sight to behold but also the largest puzzle version available (that we could find) of Georges Seurat's iconic pointillism masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

What sets this White Mountain puzzle apart from others is the inclusion of their finest quality larger puzzle pieces, making it easier to see, handle, and assemble. To further enhance your puzzle assembling experience, White Mountain includes a box stand - a useful tool that allows you to prop up the box lid, making it easier to see and reference. Every element of this White Mountain brand puzzle is designed with your comfort and enjoyment in mind. Bid farewell to sore necks and strained eyes, and say hello to convenient and enjoyable puzzle solving sessions.

Completed Dimensions:

24" x 30" (61cm x 76cm)

A must-have for Seurat admirers!

Not only is the 2019 White Mountain La Grande Jatte puzzle a joy for puzzle enthusiasts, but it also makes a fantastic gift for classic art lovers, and is a must-have for collectors of all things Seurat. Imagine the delight on their faces as they unwrap this fine art puzzle, ready to embark on their own artistic adventure.

CONDITION:

In excellent, pre-owned condition. Some signs of previous use. Please see photos.

To ensure safe delivery all items are carefully packaged before shipping out.

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"Georges Pierre Seurat (UK: /ˈsɜːrɑː, -ə/ SUR-ah, -⁠ə, US: /sʊˈrɑː/ suu-RAH,[1][2][3][4][5] French: [ʒɔʁʒ pjɛʁ sœʁa];[6] 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough surface.

Seurat's artistic personality combined qualities that are usually thought of as opposed and incompatible: on the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility, on the other, a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind.[7] His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-Impressionism, and is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.[8]
Biography
Family and education

Seurat was born on 2 December 1859 in Paris, at 60 rue de Bondy (now rue René Boulanger). The Seurat family moved to 136 boulevard de Magenta (now 110 boulevard de Magenta) in 1862 or 1863.[9] His father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, originally from Champagne, was a former legal official who had become wealthy from speculating in property, and his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was from Paris.[10] Georges had a brother, Émile Augustin, and a sister, Marie-Berthe, both older. His father lived in Le Raincy and visited his wife and children once a week at boulevard de Magenta.[11]

Georges Seurat first studied art at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin, near his family's home in the boulevard Magenta, which was run by the sculptor Justin Lequien.[12][13] In 1878, he moved on to the École des Beaux-Arts where he was taught by Henri Lehmann, and followed a conventional academic training, drawing from casts of antique sculpture and copying drawings by old masters.[12] Seurat's studies resulted in a well-considered and fertile theory of contrasts: a theory to which all his work was thereafter subjected.[14] His formal artistic education came to an end in November 1879, when he left the École des Beaux-Arts for a year of military service.[13]

After a year at the Brest Military Academy, he returned to Paris where he shared a studio with his friend Aman-Jean, while also renting a small apartment at 16 rue de Chabrol.[10] For the next two years, he worked at mastering the art of monochrome drawing. His first exhibited work, shown at the Salon, of 1883, was a Conté crayon drawing of Aman-Jean.[15] He also studied the works of Eugène Delacroix carefully, making notes on his use of color.[12]
Bathers at Asnières

He spent 1883 working on his first major painting – a large canvas titled Bathers at Asnières,[16] a monumental work showing young men relaxing by the Seine in a working-class suburb of Paris.[17] Although influenced in its use of color and light tone by Impressionism, the painting with its smooth, simplified textures and carefully outlined, rather sculptural figures, shows the continuing impact of his neoclassical training; the critic Paul Alexis described it as a "faux Puvis de Chavannes".[18] Seurat also departed from the Impressionist ideal by preparing for the work with a number of drawings and oil sketches before starting on the canvas in his studio.[18]

Bathers at Asnières was rejected by the Paris Salon, and instead he showed it at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in May 1884. Soon, however, disillusioned by the poor organization of the Indépendants, Seurat and some other artists he had met through the group – including Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet and Paul Signac – set up a new organization, the Société des Artistes Indépendants.[16] Seurat's new ideas on pointillism were to have an especially strong influence on Signac, who subsequently painted in the same idiom.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–1886, oil on canvas, 207.5 × 308.1 cm, Art Institute of Chicago

In summer 1884, Seurat began work on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

The painting shows members of each of the social classes participating in various park activities. The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer's eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors physically blended on the canvas. It took Seurat two years to complete this 10-foot-wide (3.0 m) painting, much of which he spent in the park sketching in preparation for the work. There are about 60 studies for the large painting, including a smaller version, Study for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1885), which is now in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. The full work is also part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.[19]

The painting was the inspiration for James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's musical Sunday in the Park with George[20][21][22] and played a significant symbolic role in John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off.[23]
Later career and personal life

Seurat concealed his relationship with Madeleine Knobloch (or Madeleine Knoblock, 1868–1903), an artist's model whom he portrayed in his painting Jeune femme se poudrant. In 1889, she moved in with Seurat in his studio on the seventh floor of 128 bis Boulevard de Clichy.[24]

When Madeleine became pregnant, the couple moved to a studio at 39 passage de l'Élysée-des-Beaux-Arts (now rue André Antoine). There she gave birth to their son, who was named Pierre-Georges, on 16 February 1890.[24]

Seurat spent the summer of 1890 on the coast at Gravelines, where he painted four canvases including The Channel of Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe, as well as eight oil panels, and made a few drawings.[25]
Death

Seurat died in Paris in his parents' home on 29 March 1891 at the age of 31.[9] The cause of his death is uncertain, and has been variously attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious angina, and diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same disease.[26] His last ambitious work, The Circus, was left unfinished at the time of his death.

On 30 March 1891 a commemorative service was held in the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.[9] Seurat was interred 31 March 1891 at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.[11]

At the time of Seurat's death, Madeleine was pregnant with a second child who died during or shortly after birth.[27]
Colour theory
Contemporary ideas

During the 19th century, scientist-writers such as Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and David Sutter wrote treatises on colour, optical effects and perception. They adapted the scientific research of Hermann von Helmholtz and Isaac Newton into a form accessible to laypeople.[28] Artists followed new discoveries in perception with great interest.[28]

Chevreul was perhaps the most important influence on artists at the time; his great contribution was producing a colour wheel of primary and intermediary hues. Chevreul was a French chemist who restored tapestries. During his restorations he noticed that the only way to restore a section properly was to take into account the influence of the colours around the missing wool; he could not produce the right hue unless he recognized the surrounding dyes. Chevreul discovered that two colours juxtaposed, slightly overlapping or very close together, would have the effect of another colour when seen from a distance. The discovery of this phenomenon became the basis for the pointillist technique of the Neo-Impressionist painters.[28]

Chevreul also realized that the "halo" that one sees after looking at a colour is the opposing colour (also known as complementary color). For example: After looking at a red object, one may see a cyan echo/halo of the original object. This complementary colour (as an example, cyan for red) is due to retinal persistence. Neo-Impressionist painters interested in the interplay of colours made extensive use of complementary colors in their paintings. In his works, Chevreul advised artists to think and paint not just the colour of the central object, but to add colours and make appropriate adjustments to achieve a harmony among colours. It seems that the harmony Chevreul wrote about is what Seurat came to call "emotion".[28]

It is not clear whether Seurat read all of Chevreul's book on colour contrast, published in 1859, but he did copy out several paragraphs from the chapter on painting, and he had read Charles Blanc's Grammaire des arts du dessin (1867),[12] which cites Chevreul's work. Blanc's book was directed at artists and art connoisseurs. Because of colour's emotional significance to him, he made explicit recommendations that were close to the theories later adopted by the Neo-Impressionists. He said that colour should not be based on the "judgment of taste", but rather it should be close to what we experience in reality. Blanc did not want artists to use equal intensities of colour, but to consciously plan and understand the role of each hue in creating a whole.[28]

While Chevreul based his theories on Newton's thoughts on the mixing of light, Ogden Rood based his writings on the work of Helmholtz. He analyzed the effects of mixing and juxtaposing material pigments. Rood valued as primary colors red, green and blue-violet. Like Chevreul, he said that if two colours are placed next to each other, from a distance they look like a third distinctive colour. He also pointed out that the juxtaposition of primary hues next to each other would create a far more intense and pleasing colour, when perceived by the eye and mind, than the corresponding color made simply by mixing paint. Rood advised artists to be aware of the difference between additive and subtractive qualities of colour, since material pigments and optical pigments (light) do not mix in the same way:

Material pigments: Red + Yellow + Blue = Black ( Magenta, Yellow and Cyan give a true black when mixed; Red, Yellow and Blue generally do not.)
Optical / Light : Red + Green + Blue = White

Seurat was also influenced by Sutter's Phenomena of Vision (1880), in which he wrote that "the laws of harmony can be learned as one learns the laws of harmony and music".[29] He heard lectures in the 1880s by the mathematician Charles Henry at the Sorbonne, who discussed the emotional properties and symbolic meaning of lines and colour. There remains controversy over the extent to which Henry's ideas were adopted by Seurat.[28]
Language of colour

Seurat took to heart the colour theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. He believed that a painter could use colour to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. He theorized that the scientific application of colour was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, colour intensity and colour schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism.[28]

In a letter to the writer Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 he wrote: "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of colour and of line. In tone, lighter against darker. In colour, the complementary, red-green, orange-blue, yellow-violet. In line, those that form a right-angle. The frame is in a harmony that opposes those of the tones, colours and lines of the picture, these aspects are considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations".[30][31]

Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colours, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colours, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colours and by lines pointing.

Influence
Circus Sideshow (Parade de Cirque), 1887–88, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Where the dialectic nature of Paul Cézanne's work had been greatly influential during the highly expressionistic phase of proto-Cubism, between 1908 and 1910, the work of Seurat, with its flatter, more linear structures, would capture the attention of the Cubists from 1911.[32] Seurat in his few years of activity, was able, with his observations on irradiation and the effects of contrast, to create afresh without any guiding tradition, to complete an esthetic system with a new technical method perfectly adapted to its expression.[33]

"With the advent of monochromatic Cubism in 1910–1911," writes art historian Robert Herbert, "questions of form displaced color in the artists' attention, and for these Seurat was more relevant. Thanks to several exhibitions, his paintings and drawings were easily seen in Paris, and reproductions of his major compositions circulated widely among the Cubists. The Chahut [Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo] was called by André Salmon 'one of the great icons of the new devotion', and both it and the Cirque (Circus), Musée d'Orsay, Paris, according to Guillaume Apollinaire, 'almost belong to Synthetic Cubism'."[28]

The concept was well established among the French artists that painting could be expressed mathematically, in terms of both color and form; and this mathematical expression resulted in an independent and compelling "objective truth", perhaps more so than the objective truth of the object represented.[32]

Indeed, the Neo-Impressionists had succeeded in establishing an objective scientific basis in the domain of color (Seurat addresses both problems in Circus and Dancers). Soon, the Cubists were to do so in both the domain of form and dynamics; Orphism would do so with color too.[32]

On 2 December 2021, Google honored Seurat with a Google Doodle on his 162nd birthday.

Exhibitions

From 1883 until his death, Seurat exhibited his work at the Salon, the Salon des Indépendants, Les XX in Brussels, the eighth Impressionist exhibition, and other exhibitions in France and abroad.[37]

    Salon, Paris, 1 May–20 June 1883
    The Salon showed Seurat's drawing of Edmond Aman-Jean.
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 15 May–30 June 1884
    Seurat showed Une Baignade, Asnières, after the official Salon had rejected it. Seurat's debut as a painter.
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 10 December 1884 – 17 January 1885
    Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris, American Art Association, New York, April and May 1886.
    Organised by Paul Durand-Ruel.
    Impressionist exhibition, Paris, 15 May–15 June 1886
    Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte shown for the first time.
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 21 August–21 September 1886
    Les impressionnistes, Palais du Cours Saint-André, Nantes, 10 October 1886 – 15 January 1887
    Galerie Martinet, Paris, December 1886 – January 1887
    Les XX, Brussels, February 1887
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 26 March–3 May 1887
    Théâtre Libre, Paris, November 1887 – January 1888
    Works by Seurat, Signac and van Gogh.
    Exposition de Janvier, La Revue indépendante, Paris, January 1888
    Exposition de Février, La Revue indépendante, Paris, February 1888
    Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 1–3 March 1888 (sales exhibition)
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 22 March–3 May 1888
    Tweede Jaarlijksche Tentoonstelling der Nederlandsche Etsclub, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, June 1888
    Drawing Au café concert, lent by Theo van Gogh.
    Les XX, Brussels, February 1889
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 3 September–4 October 1889
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 20 March–27 April 1890
    Showed Le Chahut, Jeune femme se poudrant and 9 other works.
    Les XX, Brussels, 7 February–8 March 1891
    Showed Le Chahut and 6 other paintings.
    Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 20 March–27 April 1891
    Showed Le Cirque and four paintings from Gravelines.

Posthumous exhibitions:

    Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection of Non-Objective Paintings, South Carolina, 1938, Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery" (wikipedia.)

"Pointillism (/ˈpwæ̃tɪlɪzəm/, also US: /ˈpwɑːn-ˌ ˈpɔɪn-/)[1] is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.

Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" was coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists, but is now used without its earlier pejorative connotation.[2] The movement Seurat began with this technique is known as Neo-impressionism. The Divisionists used a similar technique of patterns to form images, though with larger cube-like brushstrokes.[3]
Technique

The technique relies on the ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to blend the color spots into a fuller range of tones. It is related to Divisionism, a more technical variant of the method. Divisionism is concerned with color theory, whereas pointillism is more focused on the specific style of brushwork used to apply the paint.[2] It is a technique with few serious practitioners today and is notably seen in the works of Seurat, Signac, and Cross.

From 1905 to 1907, Robert Delaunay and Jean Metzinger painted in a Divisionist style with large squares or 'cubes' of color: the size and direction of each gave a sense of rhythm to the painting, yet color varied independently of size and placement.[4] This form of Divisionism was a significant step beyond the preoccupations of Signac and Cross. In 1906, the art critic Louis Chassevent recognized the difference and, as art historian Daniel Robbins pointed out, used the word "cube" which would later be taken up by Louis Vauxcelles to baptize Cubism. Chassevent writes:

M. Metzinger is a mosaicist like M. Signac but he brings more precision to the cutting of his cubes of color which appear to have been made mechanically [...].[5][6][7][8]

Practice

The practice of Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the traditional methods of blending pigments on a palette. Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses that place dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black). Televisions and computer monitors use a similar technique to represent image colors using Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors.[9]

If red, blue, and green light (the additive primaries) are mixed, the result is something close to white light (see Prism (optics)). Painting is inherently subtractive, but Pointillist colors often seem brighter than typical mixed subtractive colors. This may be partly because subtractive mixing of the pigments is avoided, and because some of the white canvas may be showing between the applied dots.[9]

The painting technique used for Pointillist color mixing is at the expense of the traditional brushwork used to delineate texture.[9]

The majority of Pointillism is done in oil paint. Anything may be used in its place, but oils are preferred for their thickness and tendency not to run or bleed.[10]
Music
Pointillism also refers to a style of 20th-century music composition. Different musical notes are made in seclusion, rather than in a linear sequence, giving a sound texture similar to the painting version of Pointillism. This type of music is also known as punctualism or klangfarbenmelodie.

Notable artists

    Georges Seurat
    Charles Angrand
    Chuck Close
    Henri-Edmond Cross
    Henri Delavallée
    Albert Dubois-Pillet
    Louis Fabien (pseudonym)
    Georges Lemmen
    Maximilien Luce
    Jean Metzinger
    Camille Pissarro
    John Roy
    Paul Signac
    Vincent van Gogh
    Théo van Rysselberghe
    Hippolyte Petitjean
    Jan Toorop
    Alfred William Finch
    Gale D. Jones

Notable paintings

    A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat
    Bathers at Asnières by Georges Seurat
    The Windmills at Overschie by Paul Signac
    Banks of Seine by Georges Seurat
    A Coastal Scene by Théo van Rysselberghe
    Family in the Orchard by Théo van Rysselberghe
    Countryside at Noon by Théo van Rysselberghe
    Afternoon at Pardigon by Henri-Edmond Cross
    Rio San Trovaso, Venice by Henri-Edmond Cross
    The Seine in front of the Trocadero by Henri-Edmond Cross
    The Pine Tree at St. Tropez by Paul Signac
    Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890 by Paul Signac
    The Yellow Sail, Venice by Paul Signac
    Notre Dame Cathedral by Maximilien Luce
    Le Pont De Pierre, Rouen by Charles Angrand
    The Beach at Heist by Georges Lemmen
    Aline Marechal by Georges Lemmen
    Vase of Flowers by Georges Lemmen
    Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape by Jean Metzinger" (wikipedia.)

"A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (French: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte) was painted from 1884 to 1886 and is Georges Seurat's most famous work.[1] A leading example of pointillist technique, executed on a large canvas, it is a founding work of the neo-impressionist movement. Seurat's composition includes a number of Parisians at a park on the banks of the River Seine. It is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Background
Georges Seurat, Study for "A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte", 1884, oil on canvas, 70.5 x 104.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Georges Seurat painted A Sunday Afternoon between May 1884 and March 1885, and from October 1885 to May 1886, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park[2] and concentrating on issues of colour, light, and form. The painting is approximately 2 by 3 metres (6.6 ft × 9.8 ft) in size. Seurat completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches before completing his masterpiece. One complete painting, the study featured to the right, measures 27 3/4 x 41 in. (70.5 x 104.1 cm) and is on display in the Metropolitan Museum.[3]

Inspired by optical effects and perception inherent in the color theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and others, Seurat adapted this scientific research to his painting.[4] Seurat contrasted miniature dots or small brushstrokes of colors that when unified optically in the human eye were perceived as a single shade or hue. He believed that this form of painting, called Divisionism at the time (a term he preferred)[5] but now known as Pointillism, would make the colors more brilliant and powerful than standard brushstrokes. The use of dots of almost uniform size came in the second year of his work on the painting, 1885–86. To make the experience of the painting even more vivid, he surrounded it with a frame of painted dots, which in turn he enclosed with a pure white, wooden frame, which is how the painting is exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Island of la Grande Jatte is located at the very gates of Paris, lying in the Seine between Neuilly and Levallois-Perret, a short distance from where La Défense business district currently stands. Although for many years it was an industrial site, it has become the site of a public garden and a housing development. When Seurat began the painting in 1884, the island was a bucolic retreat far from the urban center.

The painting was first exhibited at the eighth (and last) Impressionist exhibition in May 1886, then in August 1886, dominating the second Salon of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, of which Seurat had been a founder in 1884.[1] Seurat was extremely disciplined, always serious, and private to the point of secretiveness—for the most part, steering his own steady course. As a painter, he wanted to make a difference in the history of art and with La Grande Jatte, Seurat was immediately acknowledged as the leader of a new and rebellious form of Impressionism called Neo-Impressionism.[6][7]
Interpretation

Seurat's painting was a mirror impression of his own painting, Bathers at Asnières, completed shortly before, in 1884. Whereas the bathers in that earlier painting are doused in light, almost every figure on La Grande Jatte appears to be cast in shadow, either under trees or an umbrella, or from another person. For Parisians, Sunday was the day to escape the heat of the city and head for the shade of the trees and the cool breezes that came off the river. And at first glance, the viewer sees many different people relaxing in a park by the river. On the right, a fashionable couple, the woman with the sunshade and the man in his top hat, are on a stroll. On the left, another woman who is also well dressed extends her fishing pole over the water. There is a small man with the black hat and thin cane looking at the river, and a white dog with a brown head, a woman knitting, a man playing a trumpet, two soldiers standing at attention as the musician plays, and a woman hunched under an orange umbrella. Seurat also painted a man with a pipe, a woman under a parasol in a boat filled with rowers, and a couple admiring their infant child.[8]

Some of the characters are doing curious things. The lady on the right side has a pet monkey on a leash. A lady on the left near the river bank is fishing. The area was known at the time as being a place to procure prostitutes among the bourgeoisie, a likely allusion of the otherwise odd "fishing" rod. In the painting's center stands a little girl dressed in white (who is not in a shadow), who stares directly at the viewer of the painting. This may be interpreted as someone who is silently questioning the audience.[9]

In the 1950s, historian and Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch drew social and political significance from Seurat's La Grande Jatte. The historian's focal point was Seurat's mechanical use of the figures and what their static nature said about French society at the time. Afterward, the work received heavy criticism by many that centered on the artist's mathematical and robotic interpretation of modernity in Paris.[8]

According to historian of Modernism William R. Everdell:

Seurat himself told a sympathetic critic, Gustave Kahn, that his model was the Panathenaic procession in the Parthenon frieze. But Seurat didn't want to paint ancient Athenians. He wanted 'to make the moderns file past ... in their essential form.' By 'moderns' he meant nothing very complicated. He wanted ordinary people as his subject, and ordinary life. He was a bit of a democrat—a "Communard," as one of his friends remarked, referring to the left-wing revolutionaries of 1871; and he was fascinated by the way things distinct and different encountered each other: the city and the country, the farm and the factory, the bourgeois and the proletarian meeting at their edges in a sort of harmony of opposites.[10]

The border of the painting is, unusually, in inverted color, as if the world around them is also slowly inverting from the way of life they have known. Seen in this context, the boy who bathes on the other side of the river bank at Asnières appears to be calling out to them, as if to say, "We are the future. Come and join us".[9]
Painting materials

Seurat painted the La Grande Jatte in three distinct stages.[11] In the first stage, which was started in 1884, he mixed his paints from several individual pigments and was still using dull earth pigments such as ochre or burnt sienna. In the second stage, during 1885 and 1886, Seurat dispensed with the earth pigments and also limited the number of individual pigments in his paints. This change in his palette was due to his application of the advanced color theories of his time. His intention was to paint small dots or strokes of pure color that would then mix on the retina of the beholder to achieve the desired color impression instead of the usual practice of mixing individual pigments.

Seurat's palette consisted of the usual pigments of his time such as cobalt blue, emerald green and vermilion.[12][13] Additionally, he used the then new pigment zinc yellow (zinc chromate), predominantly for yellow highlights in the sunlit grass in the middle of the painting but also in mixtures with orange and blue pigments. In the century and more since the painting's completion, the zinc yellow has darkened to brown—a color degeneration that was already showing in the painting in Seurat's lifetime.[14] The discoloration of the originally bright yellow zinc yellow (zinc chromate) to a brownish color is due to the chemical reaction of the chromate ions to orange-colored dichromate ions.[15] In the third stage during 1888–89 Seurat added the colored borders to his composition.

The results of investigation into the discoloration of this painting have been combined with further research into natural aging of paints to digitally rejuvenate the painting.[16]
Acquisition by the Art Institute of Chicago

In 1923, Frederic Bartlett was appointed trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago. He and his second wife, Helen Birch Bartlett, loaned their collection of French Post-Impressionist and Modernist art to the museum. It was Mrs. Bartlett who had an interest in French and avant-garde artists and influenced her husband's collecting tastes. Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was purchased on the advice of the Art Institute of Chicago's curatorial staff in 1924.[17]

In conceptual artist Don Celender's 1974–75 book Observation and Scholarship Examination for Art Historians, Museum Directors, Artists, Dealers and Collectors, it is claimed that the institute paid $24,000 for the work[17][18] (over $354,000 in 2018 dollars[19]).

In 1958, the painting was loaned for the only time: to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. On 15 April 1958, a fire there, which killed one person on the second floor of the museum, forced the evacuation of the painting, which had been on a floor above the fire, to the Whitney Museum, which adjoined MoMA at the time.[20]
In popular culture

The painting is the basis for the 1984 Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, which tells a fictionalized story of the painting's creation. Subsequently, the painting is sometimes referred to by the misnomer "Sunday in the Park".

The painting is prominently featured in the 1986 comedy film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in a scene later parodied, among others, in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Family Guy, and Muppet Babies.[citation needed]

In Topiary Park (formerly Old Deaf School Park) in Columbus, Ohio, sculptor James T. Mason re-created the painting in topiary form; the installation was completed in 1989." (wikipedia.)

"The Île de la Jatte or Île de la Grande Jatte is an island in the river Seine, located in the department of Hauts-de-Seine, and shared between the two communes of Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois. It is situated at the very gates of Paris, being 7 km distant (in a straight line) from the towers of Notre Dame and 3 km from the Place de l'Étoile. The island, which has about 4,000 inhabitants, is nearly 2 km long and almost 200 m wide at its widest point. Its name translates as "Island of the Bowl" or "Island of the Big Bowl".

It is best known as the setting for Georges Seurat's pointillist oil painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886), itself the inspiration for the musical Sunday in the Park with George (1984).

Pont de Levallois–Bécon Métro station lies close to the north-eastern end of the island.[1]
History
La Grande Jatte in 2011

In 1818, the Duke of Orléans, Louis-Philippe, acquired the Château de Neuilly to house his family of ten children. He bought the land and created a park which included the island, reachable only by boat. He also moved the Temple de Mars ('Temple of Mars'), which his father had commissioned, from Parc Monceau, and put it on the northern point of the island, converting it into the Temple de l’amour ('Temple of Love'). It was moved to the southern end of the island in 1930.[2][3]

Between 1850 and 1870, Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann further modified the island, and artists began painting there. At the end of the 19th century the island became known for its painters, especially the Impressionists. In addition to Georges Seurat, artist such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Alfred Sisley, Charles Angrand, and Albert Gleizes painted scenes of the island.[4][5]

In June 2009, a walk around the island (Île des Impressionnistes) was established, detailing the works of the Impressionists.[6][7][8]
Artistic portrayal

Many artists have painted L’Île de la Grande Jatte:[9]

    Émile Bernard
        Le Pont de fer d’Asnières, 1887, oil on canvas, 45.9 × 54.2 cm, Museum of Modern Art
    Pierre Bonnard
        Les travailleurs à la Grande Jatte, c. 1916–1920, oil on canvas, 130 x 160 cm, National Museum of Western Art
    Albert Gleizes
        Les Baigneuses (The Bathers), 1912, oil on canvas, 105 x 171 cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
        L’Île de la Grande Jatte ou Bord de parc avec rivière animée de canots, 1907–1909, pastel and ink on paper, 25 × 41.5 cm, private collection
        L’Île de la Grande Jatte, 1908, charcoal and gouache on paper, 25 × 41.5 cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne
        La Seine près de Courbevoie, 1908, oil on canvas, 54 × 65 cm, Musée Roybet Fould [fr]
    Claude Monet
        L’île de la Grande Jatte, 1874, oil on canvas, 50 × 70 cm, private collection
        À travers les arbres, île de la Grande Jatte, 1878, oil on canvas, 54 × 65 cm, private collection
        Les rives de la Seine, île de la Grande Jatte, 1878, oil on canvas, 52 × 63 cm, Musée Marmottan
        Printemps à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, 1878, oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm, National Gallery (Norway)
    Alexandre Nozal [fr]
        L’Embâcle de la Seine entre Asnières et Courbevoie, 1891, pastel and graphite on canvas, 51 × 90 cm, Petit Palais
    Georges Seurat
        Baignade à Asnières, 1884, oil on canvas, 201 × 300 cm, National Gallery
        La Seine à Courbevoie ou Paysage à la tourelle, 1884, oil on canvas, 15.5 × 24.5 cm, Van Gogh Museum
        Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, 1884–1886, oil on canvas, 207.5 × 308.1 cm, Art Institute of Chicago
        Temps gris, Grande-Jatte, 1886, oil on canvas, 70.5 × 86.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art
        Le Pont de Courbevoie, 1886–87, oil on canvas 46.4 × 55.3 cm, Courtauld Gallery
        La Seine à la Grande Jatte, 1888, oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
    Alfred Sisley
        L’Île de la Grande Jatte, 1873, oil on canvas, 50 × 65 cm, Musée d'Orsay
    Vincent van Gogh
        La Seine et le pont de la Grande Jatte, 1887, oil on canvas, 32 × 40.5 cm, Van Gogh Museum

Celebrities who have lived on the island

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The following celebrities are known to have lived on the island:

    Richard Branson, business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.[citation needed]
    Christian Clavier, actor.[citation needed]
    Alexander Grothendieck, mathematician.[10]
    Patricia Kaas, singer.[citation needed]
    Jean Reno, actor.[citation needed]
    Yves Rénier, actor.[citation needed]
    Nicolas Sarkozy, politician, 23rd President of France.[citation needed]
    Alessandra Sublet, radio and television host.[citation needed]
    Marco Verratti, football (soccer) player.[citation needed]
    Victor Wembanyama, basketball player." (wikipedia.)

"A jigsaw puzzle (with context, sometimes just jigsaw or just puzzle) is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaicked pieces, each of which typically has a portion of a picture. When assembled, the puzzle pieces produce a complete picture.

In the 18th century, jigsaw puzzles were created by painting a picture on a flat, rectangular piece of wood, then cutting it into small pieces. The name "jigsaw" derives from the tools used to cut the images into pieces—variably identified as jigsaws, fretsaws or scroll saws. Assisted by Jason Hinds, John Spilsbury, a London cartographer and engraver, is credited with commercialising jigsaw puzzles around 1760. His design took world maps, and cut out the individual nations in order for them to be reassembled by students as a geographical teaching aid.[1] They have since come to be made primarily of interlocking cardboard pieces, incorporating a variety of images and designs.

Jigsaw puzzles have been used in research studies to study cognitive abilities such as mental rotation visuospatial ability in young children.

Typical images on jigsaw puzzles include scenes from nature, buildings, and repetitive designs—castles and mountains are common, as well as other traditional subjects. However, any picture can be used. Artisan puzzle-makers and companies using technologies for one-off and small print-run puzzles utilize a wide range of subject matter, including optical illusions, unusual art, and personal photographs. In addition to traditional flat, two-dimensional puzzles, three-dimensional puzzles have entered large-scale production, including spherical puzzles and architectural recreations.

A range of jigsaw puzzle accessories, including boards, cases, frames, and roll-up mats, have become available to assist jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts. While most assembled puzzles are disassembled for reuse, they can also be attached to a backing with adhesive and displayed as art.

Competitive Jigsaw Puzzling has grown in popularity in recent years, with both regional and national competitions held in many countries, and annual World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships held from 2019.
History

John Spilsbury is believed to have produced the first jigsaw puzzle around 1760, using a marquetry saw.[1]

Early puzzles, known as dissections, were produced by mounting maps on sheets of hardwood and cutting along national boundaries, creating a puzzle useful for teaching geography.[1] Royal governess Lady Charlotte Finch used such "dissected maps" to teach the children of King George III and Queen Charlotte.[4][5] Cardboard jigsaw puzzles appeared in the late 1800s, but were slow to replace wooden ones because manufacturers felt that cardboard puzzles would be perceived as low-quality, and because profit margins on wooden jigsaws were larger.[1]

The name "jigsaw" came to be associated with the puzzle around 1880 when fretsaws became the tool of choice for cutting the shapes.[1] Along with fretsaws, jigsaws and scroll saws have also been noted as tools used to cut jigsaw puzzles into pieces.[6] The term "jigsaw puzzle" dates back to 1906.[6]
Wooden jigsaw pieces, cut by hand

Jigsaw puzzles soared in popularity during the Great Depression, as they provided a cheap, long-lasting, recyclable form of entertainment.[1][7] It was around this time that jigsaws evolved to become more complex and appealing to adults.[1] They were also given away in product promotions and used in advertising, with customers completing an image of the promoted product.[1][7]

Sales of wooden puzzles fell after World War II as improved wages led to price increases, while improvements in manufacturing processes made paperboard jigsaws more attractive.[7]

Demand for jigsaw puzzles saw a surge, comparable to that of the Great Depression, during the ....-19 pandemic's stay-at-home orders.[8][9]
Modern construction
Paperboard jigsaw pieces

Most modern jigsaw puzzles are made of paperboard as they are easier and cheaper to mass-produce. An enlarged photograph or printed reproduction of a painting or other two-dimensional artwork is glued to cardboard, which is then fed into a press. The press forces a set of hardened steel blades of the desired pattern, called a puzzle die, through the board until fully cut.

The puzzle die is a flat board, often made from plywood, with slots cut or burned in the same shape as the knives that are used. The knives are set into the slots and covered in a compressible material, typically foam rubber, which ejects the cut puzzle pieces.

The cutting process is similar to making shaped cookies with a cookie cutter. However, the forces involved are tremendously greater: A typical 1000-piece puzzle requires upwards of 700 tons of force to push the die through the board.

Beginning in the 1930s, jigsaw puzzles were cut using large hydraulic presses that now cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The precise cuts gave a snug fit, but the cost limited jigsaw puzzle production to large corporations. Recent roller-press methods achieve the same results at a lower cost.[citation needed]

New technology has also enabled laser-cutting of wooden or acrylic jigsaw puzzles. The advantage is that the puzzle can be custom-cut to any size or shape, with any number or average size of pieces. Many museums have laser-cut acrylic puzzles made of some of their art so visiting children can assemble puzzles of the images on display. Acrylic pieces are very durable, waterproof, and can withstand continued use without the image degrading. Also, because the print and cut patterns are computer-based, missing pieces can easily be remade.

By the early 1960s, Tower Press was the world's largest jigsaw puzzle maker; it was acquired by Waddingtons in 1969.[10] Numerous smaller-scale puzzle makers work in artisanal styles, handcrafting and handcutting their creations.[11][12][13][14]
Variations
Jigsaw puzzle software allowing rotation of pieces
A three-dimensional puzzle composed of several two-dimensional puzzles stacked on top of one another
A puzzle without a picture

Jigsaw puzzles come in a variety of sizes. Among those marketed to adults, 300-, 500- and 750-piece puzzles are considered "smaller". More sophisticated, but still common, puzzles come in sizes of 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, and 5,000 pieces.

Jigsaw puzzles geared towards children typically have many fewer pieces and are typically much larger. For very young children, puzzles with as few as 4 to 9 large pieces (so as not to be a choking hazard) are standard. They are usually made of wood or plastic for durability and can be cleaned without damage.

The most common layout for a thousand-piece puzzle is 38 pieces by 27 pieces, for an actual total of 1,026 pieces. Most 500-piece puzzles are 27 pieces by 19 pieces, for a total of 513 pieces. A few puzzles are double-sided so they can be solved from either side—adding complexity, as the enthusiast must determine if they are looking at the right side of each piece.

"Family puzzles" of 100–550 pieces use an assortment of small, medium and large pieces, with each size going in one direction or towards the middle of the puzzle. This allows a family of different skill levels and hand sizes to work on the puzzle together. Companies like Springbok, Cobble Hill, Ceaco, Buffalo Games and Suns Out make this type of specialty puzzle. Ravensburger, on the other hand, formerly made this type of puzzle from 2000 until 2008.

There are also three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. Many are made of wood or styrofoam and require the puzzle to be solved in a particular order, as some pieces will not fit if others are already in place. One type of 3-D jigsaw puzzle is a puzzle globe, often made of plastic. Like 2-D puzzles, the assembled pieces form a single layer, but the final form is three-dimensional. Most globe puzzles have designs representing spherical shapes such as the Earth, the Moon, and historical globes of the Earth.

Also common are puzzle boxes, simple three-dimensional puzzles with a small drawer or box in the center for storage.

Jigsaw puzzles can vary significantly in price depending on their complexity, number of pieces, and brand. In the US, children's puzzles can start around $5, while larger ones can be closer to $50. The most expensive puzzle to date was sold for $US27,000 in 2005 at a charity auction for The Golden Retriever Foundation.[15]

Several word-puzzle games use pieces similar to those in jigsaw puzzles. Examples include Alfa-Lek, Jigsaw Words, Nab-It!, Puzzlage, Typ-Dom, Word Jigsaw, and Yottsugo.[16][citation needed]
Puzzle pieces
A "whimsy" piece in a wooden jigsaw puzzle
A 3D jigsaw puzzle

Many puzzles are termed "fully interlocking", which means that adjacent pieces are connected so that they stay attached when one is turned. Sometimes the connection is tight enough to pick up a solved part by holding one piece.

Some fully interlocking puzzles have pieces of a similar shape, with rounded tabs (interjambs) on opposite ends and corresponding indentations—called blanks—on the other two sides to receive the tabs. Other fully interlocking puzzles may have tabs and blanks variously arranged on each piece; but they usually have four sides, and the numbers of tabs and blanks thus add up to four. Uniformly shaped fully interlocking puzzles, sometimes called "Japanese Style", are the most difficult because the differences in the pieces' shapes are most subtle.[citation needed]

Most jigsaw puzzles are square, rectangular or round, with edge pieces with one straight or smoothly curved side, plus four corner pieces (if the puzzle is square or rectangular). However, some puzzles have edge, and corner pieces cut like the rest, with no straight sides, making it more challenging to identify them. Other puzzles utilize more complex edge pieces to form unique shapes when assembled, such as profiles of animals.

The pieces of spherical jigsaw, like immersive panorama jigsaw, can be triangular-shaped, according to the rules of tessellation of the geoid primitive.

Designer Yuu Asaka created "Jigsaw Puzzle 29". Instead of four corner pieces, it has five. The puzzle is made from pale blue acrylic without a picture.[17] It was awarded the Jury Honorable Mention of 2018 Puzzle Design Competition.[18] Because many puzzlers had solved it easily, he created "Jigsaw Puzzle 19" which composed only with corner pieces as revenge.[19] It was made with transparent green acrylic pieces without a picture.[20]
Calculating the number of edge pieces

Jigsaw puzzlers often want to know in advance how many border pieces they are looking for to verify they have found all of them. Puzzle sizes are typically listed on commercially distributed puzzles but usually include the total number of pieces in the puzzle and do not list the count of edge or interior pieces.

Puzzlers, therefore, calculate the number of border pieces. To calculate B (border pieces) from P (the total piece count), follow this method:

    List the prime factors of P.

        For a 513-piece jigsaw, the prime factorization tree is 3×3×3×19=513

    Take the square root of P and round off.

        √513 ≈ 22.6
        round to 23

    Look for numbers in the prime factor list within ±20% of the square root of P.
        Calculate 20% of the rounded square root of P.

            1⁄5 × 23 = 4.6

        Develop the range, ±20%, from the rounded square root of P.

            23 ±4.6 = 18.4 to 27.6

        Compare the range with the factor list. Define this as E1.

            The factor list shows 19 in the range.

    Determine the horizontal / vertical dimensions.
        Divide P (the total number of pieces) by E1 to determine the horizontal / vertical dimensions, E1xE2.

            513 / 19 = 27
            This is probably a 19×27 puzzle.

        Alternative method: take the remaining numbers from the prime factorization tree.

            3x3x3 = 27

    Add the four sides and subtract 4 to correct for the corner pieces, which would otherwise be counted in both the horizontal and vertical.

        (27 × 2)+(19 × 2)-4 = 88

These 88 border pieces include 4 corners, 17 pieces between corners on the short sides, and 25 between corners on the long sides.

Common puzzle dimensions:

    1000 piece puzzle: 1026 pieces, 126 border pieces (38x27)[21]

World records
Largest commercially available jigsaw puzzles
Pieces     Name of puzzle     Company     Year     Size [cm]     Area [m2]
60,000     What A Wonderful World     Dowdle Folk Art     2022     883 × 243     21.46
54,000     Travel around Art     Grafika     2020     864 × 204     17.63
52,110     (No title: collage of animals)     MartinPuzzle     2018     696 × 202     14.06
51,300     27 Wonders from Around the World     Kodak     2019     869 × 191     16.60
48,000     Around the World     Grafika     2017     768 × 204     15.67
42,000     La vuelta al Mundo     Educa Borras     2017     749 × 157     11.76
40,320     Making Mickey's Magic     Ravensburger     2018     680 × 192     13.06
40,320     Memorable Disney Moments     Ravensburger     2016     680 × 192     13.06
33,600     Wild Life     Educa Borras     2014     570 × 157     8.95
32,000     New York City Window     Ravensburger     2014     544 × 192     10.45
32,000     Double Retrospect     Ravensburger     2010     544 × 192     10.45
24,000     Life, The greatest puzzle     Educa Borras     2007     428 × 157     6.72
Largest-sized jigsaw puzzles

The world's largest-sized jigsaw puzzle measured 5,428.8 m2 (58,435 sq ft) with 21,600 pieces, each measuring a Guinness World Records maximum size of 50 cm by 50 cm. It was assembled on 3 November 2002 by 777 people at the former Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.[22]
Largest jigsaw puzzle – most pieces
The Guinness record of CYM Group in 2011 with 551,232 pieces

The jigsaw with the greatest number of pieces had 551,232 pieces and measured 14.85 × 23.20 m (48 ft 8.64 in × 76 ft 1.38 in). It was assembled on 25 September 2011 at Phú Thọ Indoor Stadium in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, by students of the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City. It is listed by the Guinness World Records for the "Largest Jigsaw Puzzle – most pieces", and was divided into 3,132 sections each containing 176 pieces, which were assembled individually and then connected to compose the full puzzle.[23][24]
Research studies

Studies have shown that the ability to solve jigsaw puzzles develops during early childhood. During this time there is significant development in cognitive abilities such as mental rotation and visuospatial ability, which can be used to solve a puzzle. Throughout life those abilities can continue to develop.

In 2021, researchers conducted a study during which a group of children between the ages of 3 and 5 years old were asked to complete three different types of jigsaw puzzles. Each child was given a normal jigsaw puzzle with a picture on it, another with normal shaped pieces but without an image on it and finally a puzzle with an image on it but all the pieces were shaped the same. They were shown the completed versions then asked to reassemble them. The children were given three minutes to complete each puzzle; half of the group was given a guide picture while the other half was not. The results revealed that 4 and 5 year olds were able to complete all three puzzles within the allotted time, meanwhile most 3-year-olds were able to complete the normal jigsaw puzzle and the puzzle of normal shaped pieces without an image on it but struggled more with the puzzle that had an image but all the pieces were shaped the same. With all of the children the fastest completion time was with the normal puzzle and the slowest was with the puzzle with an image and same shaped pieces; there were also fewer errors in with the children that had a guide.[25] The cognitive development between the different ages can be seen in their completion times and how many errors were made. The older children were able to complete the puzzles with fewer errors because their mental rotation abilities, which is the ability to rotate an object in your mind to see it from a different perspective, are further developed than they are for younger children who are more likely to resort to trial and error.

The difference in the visuospatial abilities between boys and girls were studied in 2017 using jigsaw puzzles. A second-grade class was asked to complete three different puzzles, the first was a neutral one of a horse, second was a male-oriented one of a tractor, and the third was a female-oriented one of the character Bambi. The Bambi puzzle had the fastest completion time with all the children which is believed to be caused by their previous experience, and because it was finished the fastest with all of the children researchers don't believe there is a connection between the puzzles' targeted audience and the sex of the children. Overall the girls in the class were faster, and made fewer errors.[26]
Society

The logo of Wikipedia is a globe made out of jigsaw pieces. The incomplete sphere symbolizes the room to add new knowledge.[citation needed]

In the logo of the Colombian Office of the Attorney General appears a jigsaw puzzle piece in the foreground. They named it "The Key Piece": "The piece of a puzzle is the proper symbol to visually represent the Office of the Attorney General because it includes the concepts of search, solution and answers that the entity pursues through the investigative activity."[27]
Art and entertainment

The central antagonist in the Saw film franchise is nicknamed Jigsaw,[28] due to his practice of cutting the shape of a puzzle piece from the remains of his victims.

In the 1933 Laurel and Hardy short Me and My Pal, several characters attempt to complete a large jigsaw puzzle.[29]

Lost in Translation is a poem about a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle, as well as an interpretive puzzle itself.

Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec's most famous novel, tells as pieces of a puzzle a story about a jigsaw puzzle maker.

Jigsaw Puzzle (song), sometimes spelled "Jig-Saw Puzzle" is a song by the rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, featured on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet.

In ‘‘Citizen Kane‘’ Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore) is reduced to spending her days completing jigsaws after the failure of her operatic career. After Kane’s death when ‘’Xanadu’’ is emptied, hundreds of jigsaw puzzles are discovered in the cellar.

Rhett And Link Do A Rainy Day Jigsaw Puzzle is a short video by self-described “internetainers” (portmanteau of “Internet” and “entertainers”) Rhett & Link which portrays the frustration of discovering a puzzle piece is missing.
Mental health

According to the Alzheimer Society of Canada, doing jigsaw puzzles is one of many activities that can help keep the brain active and may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Jigsaw puzzle pieces were first used as a symbol for autism in 1963 by the United Kingdom's National Autistic Society.[31] The organization chose jigsaw pieces for their logo to represent the "puzzling" nature of autism and the inability to "fit in" due to social differences, and also because jigsaw pieces were recognizable and otherwise unused.[32] Puzzle pieces have since been incorporated into the logos and promotional materials of many organizations, including the Autism Society of America and Autism Speaks.

Proponents of the autism rights movement oppose the jigsaw puzzle iconography, stating that metaphors such as "puzzling" and "incomplete" are harmful to autistic people. Critics of the puzzle piece symbol instead advocate for a gold-colored or red infinity symbol representing diversity.[33] In 2017, the journal Autism concluded that the use of the jigsaw puzzle evoked negative public perception towards autistic individuals. They removed the puzzle piece from their cover in February 2018." (wikipedia.)

"Tiling puzzles are puzzles involving two-dimensional packing problems in which a number of flat shapes have to be assembled into a larger given shape without overlaps (and often without gaps). Some tiling puzzles ask you to dissect a given shape first and then rearrange the pieces into another shape. Other tiling puzzles ask you to dissect a given shape while fulfilling certain conditions. The two latter types of tiling puzzles are also called dissection puzzles.

Tiling puzzles may be made from wood, metal, cardboard, plastic or any other sheet-material. Many tiling puzzles are now available as computer games.

Tiling puzzles have a long history. Some of the oldest and most famous are jigsaw puzzles and the tangram puzzle." (wikipedia.)

"A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology.

Puzzles are often created to be a form of entertainment but they can also arise from serious mathematical or logical problems. In such cases, their solution may be a significant contribution to mathematical research.[1]
Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the word puzzle (as a verb) to the end of the 16th century. Its earliest use documented in the OED was in a book titled The Voyage of Robert Dudley...to the West Indies, 1594–95, narrated by Capt. Wyatt, by himself, and by Abram Kendall, master (published circa 1595). The word later came to be used as a noun, first as an abstract noun meaning 'the state or condition of being puzzled', and later developing the meaning of 'a perplexing problem'. The OED's earliest clear citation in the sense of 'a toy that tests the player's ingenuity' is from Sir Walter Scott's 1814 novel Waverley, referring to a toy known as a "reel in a bottle".[2]

The etymology of the verb puzzle is described by OED as "unknown"; unproven hypotheses regarding its origin include an Old English verb puslian meaning 'pick out', and a derivation of the verb pose." (wikipedia.)

"An umbrella or parasol is a folding canopy supported by wooden or metal ribs that is usually mounted on a wooden, metal, or plastic pole. It is designed to protect a person against rain. The term umbrella is traditionally used when protecting oneself from rain, with parasol used when protecting oneself from sunlight, though the terms continue to be used interchangeably. Often the difference is the material used for the canopy; some parasols are not waterproof, and some umbrellas are transparent. Umbrella canopies may be made of fabric or flexible plastic. There are also combinations of parasol and umbrella that are called en-tout-cas (French for "in any case").[2]

Generally speaking, parasols and umbrellas are small, handheld, personal use items. Golf umbrellas are the biggest hand-portable umbrellas available. There are two types of umbrellas: completely collapsible umbrellas, which can be folded up into a small enough bag because the metal pole supporting the canopy retracts, and non-collapsible umbrellas, which only have the canopy that can be folded up. Manually operated umbrellas and spring-loaded automatic umbrellas, which open with a button press, can also be distinguished from one another.

Hand-held umbrellas have a type of handle which can be made from wood, a plastic cylinder or a bent "crook" handle (like the handle of a cane). Umbrellas are available in a range of price and quality points, ranging from inexpensive, modest quality models sold at discount stores to expensive, finely made, designer-labeled models. Larger parasols capable of blocking the sun for several people are often used as fixed or semi-fixed devices, used with patio tables or other outdoor furniture, or as points of shade on a sunny beach.

Parasol may also be called sunshade, or beach umbrella (US English). An umbrella may also be called a brolly (UK slang), parapluie (nineteenth century, French origin), rainshade, gamp (British, informal, dated), or bumbershoot (rare, facetious American slang). When used for snow, it is called a paraneige. When used for sun it is called a parasol.
Etymology

The word parasol (originally from French) is a combination of para, meaning 'to shield from' derived from the Latin parare, and sol, meaning 'sun'.[3] Parapluie (French) similarly consists of para combined with pluie, which means 'rain' (which in turn derives from pluvia, the Latin word for rain). Hence, a parasol shields from sunlight while a parapluie shields from rain.

The word umbrella evolved from the Latin umbra, meaning 'shaded' or 'shadow'.[4] The Oxford English Dictionary records the first recorded usage in this sense in 1611.[5][6]

In Britain, umbrellas were sometimes referred to as "gamps" after the character Mrs. Gamp in the Charles Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit as the character was well known for carrying an umbrella, although this usage is now dated or obsolete.[7][5]

Brolly is a slang word for umbrella, used often in Australia, Ireland, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Bumbershoot is a rare and fanciful Americanism from the late 19th century....18th and 19th centuries

Kersey's Dictionary (1708) describes an umbrella as a "screen commonly used by women to keep off rain".

The first lightweight folding umbrella in Europe was introduced in 1710 by a Paris merchant named Jean Marius, whose shop was located near the barrier of Saint-Honoré. It could be opened and closed in the same way as modern umbrellas, and weighed less than one kilogram. Marius received from the King the exclusive right to produce folding umbrellas for five years. A model was purchased by the Princess Palatine in 1712, and she enthused about it to her aristocratic friends, making it an essential fashion item for Parisiennes. In 1759, a French scientist named Navarre presented a new design to the French Academy of Sciences for an umbrella combined with a cane. Pressing a small button on the side of the cane opened the umbrella.[38]

Their use became widespread in Paris. In 1768, a Paris magazine reported:

"The common usage for quite some time now is not to go out without an umbrella, and to have the inconvenience of carrying it under your arm for six months in order to use it perhaps six times. Those who do not want to be mistaken for vulgar people much prefer to take the risk of being soaked, rather than to be regarded as someone who goes on foot; an umbrella is a sure sign of someone who doesn't have his own carriage." [37]

In 1769, the Maison Antoine, a store at the Magasin d'Italie on rue Saint-Denis, was the first to offer umbrellas for rent to those caught in downpours, and it became a common practice. The Lieutenant General of Police of Paris issued regulations for the rental umbrellas; they were made of oiled green silk, and carried a number so they could be found and reclaimed if someone walked off with one.[37]

By 1808 there were seven shops making and selling umbrellas in Paris; one shop, Sagnier on rue des Vielles-Haudriettes, received the first patent given for an invention in France for a new model of umbrella. By 1813 there were 42 shops; by 1848 there were three hundred seventy-seven small shops making umbrellas in Paris, employing 1400 workers. One of the well-known makers was Boutique Bétaille, which was located at rue Royale 20 from 1880 to 1939. Another was Revel, based in Lyon. By the end of the century, however, cheaper manufacturers in the Auvergne replaced Paris as the centre of umbrella manufacturing, and the town of Aurillac became the umbrella capital of France. The town still produces about half the umbrellas made in France; the umbrella factories there employ about one hundred workers. [37]

In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe constructs his own umbrella in imitation of those that he had seen used in Brazil. "I covered it with skins", he says, "the hair outwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest." From this description the original heavy umbrella came to be called "Robinson" which they retained for many years in England.

Captain James Cook, in one of his voyages in the late 18th century, reported seeing some of the natives of the South Pacific Islands with umbrellas made of palm leaves. In the highlands of Mindanao in the Philippines, the large fronds of Dipteris conjugata are used as an umbrella.[39]

The use of the umbrella or parasol (though not unknown) was uncommon in England during the earlier half of the eighteenth century, as is evident from the comment made by General (then Lieut.-Colonel) James Wolfe, when writing from Paris in 1752; he speaks of the use of umbrellas for protection from the sun and rain, and wonders why a similar practice did not occur in England. About the same time, umbrellas came into general use as people found their value, and got over the shyness natural to its introduction. Jonas Hanway, the founder of the Magdalen Hospital, has the credit of being the first man who ventured to dare public reproach and ridicule by carrying one habitually in London. As he died in 1786, and he is said to have carried an umbrella for thirty years, the date of its first use by him may be set down at about 1750. John Macdonald relates that in 1770, he used to be addressed as, "Frenchman, Frenchman! why don't you call a coach?" whenever he went out with his umbrella.[10] By 1788 however they seem to have been accepted: a London newspaper advertises the sale of "improved and pocket Umbrellas, on steel frames, with every other kind of common Umbrella."[40]

Since then, the umbrella has come into general use, in consequence of numerous improvements. In China people learned how to waterproof their paper umbrellas with wax and lacquer. The transition to the present portable form is due, partly, to the substitution of silk and gingham for the heavy and troublesome oiled silk, which admitted of the ribs and frames being made much lighter, and also to many ingenious mechanical improvements in the framework. Victorian era umbrellas had frames of wood or baleen, but these devices were expensive and hard to fold when wet. Samuel Fox invented the steel-ribbed umbrella in 1852; however, the Encyclopédie Méthodique mentions metal ribs at the end of the eighteenth century, and they were also on sale in London during the 1780s.[40] Modern designs usually employ a telescoping steel trunk; new materials such as cotton, plastic film and nylon often replace the original silk." (wikipedia.)