Tip: move over the painting to use the lens.

Final Study for "Bathers at Asnières"

Artist: Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891)
Date: 1883
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 15.8 × 25.1 cm (6 1/4 × 9 7/8 in.); Framed: 54.3 × 63.9 × 6.1 cm (21 3/8 × 25 1/8 × 2 3/8 in.)
Made in: France
Style: Post-Impressionism
Where to see it: Art Institute of Chicago

Gift of the Adele R. Levy Fund, Inc. · CC0 Public Domain · Art Institute of Chicago · image via Wikimedia Commons · see it at the museum ↗

Notes from the museum

Georges Seurat made this painting as a preparatory work for his monumental Bathers at Asnières , now in the National Gallery, London. It shows men and boys on the bank of the Seine River in the working-class Parisian suburb of Asnières. The view presented here is just across the river from the leisure park Seurat immortalized in his best-known work, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 . The frozen gestures and sedate poses of these bathers set a mood distinct from the sparkling scenes of Parisians enjoying restaurants and other riverbank activities favored by the Impressionists. Nevertheless, Seurat’s focus on a subject from modern life, his luminous palette, and his airy brushwork show how the young artist adapted characteristics of Impressionist painting for his own purposes.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago (open access). Our full story for this work is coming soon.

Slow Look

The whole picture Let your eyes wander. Where do they want to rest?
The light Find the brightest spot. What is it showing you?
The edges Look at what is half cut off at the borders.
One small detail Choose one tiny thing and stay with it for a while.
The whole picture again Step back. Has it changed for you?

About Georges Seurat

Georges Pierre Seurat 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.

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