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Bathers at Asnières
Georges Seurat · Post-Impressionism & Neo-Impressionism
- Artist
- Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859–1891)
- Date
- 1884
- Dimensions
- 201 x 300 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- National Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Bathers at Asnières shows young working men relaxing on a grassy bank of the Seine on a hot summer day, some sitting, some lying down, one boy standing waist-deep in the water. In the distance rise the factory chimneys of Clichy.
A closer look
This was Seurat’s first large painting, made when he was only 24. The figures sit still in profile, absorbed in their own thoughts, bathed in a hazy, even light. The technique is still mostly made of criss-crossing brushstrokes rather than dots; Seurat added some touches of pointillist colour later, for example in the boy’s hat. Rejected by the official Salon in 1884, it was shown at the first exhibition of the Independent Artists, which Seurat helped to found.
History of the painting
After the official Salon rejected it in 1884, Seurat showed Bathers at Asnières that year at the first exhibition of the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants, where it was hung near the bar. It was little noticed during his lifetime. In 1924 it was bought for the Tate Gallery with money from the fund the industrialist Samuel Courtauld had set up to acquire modern French paintings for Britain, and in 1961 it was transferred to the National Gallery.
