Georges Seurat, 'Bathers at Asnières', 1884

Bathers at Asnières

Georges Seurat

Room 44

About the work

Overview

Several men and boys relax on the banks of the Seine at Asnières and Courbevoie, an industrial suburb north-west of central Paris. Shown in profile, they are as immobile as sculptures and each seems absorbed in his own thoughts, neither engaging with each other nor with us. Suffused with bright but hazy sunlight, the entire scene has an almost eerie stillness to it, as if time has been suspended and all movement temporarily frozen. In the background there is a railway bridge that partly hides a parallel road bridge, as well as the chimneys of the gas plant and factories at Clichy, where some of the men may work.

In-depth

This large picture was Seurat’s first major composition, painted when he had not yet turned 25. He intended it to be a grand statement with which he would make his mark at the official Salon in the spring of 1884. It shows several men and boys relaxing in the sun on the banks of the Seine, between the bridges at Asnières and Courbevoie, north-west of central Paris. In the background is a railway bridge that partly hides a parallel road bridge, as well as the chimneys of the gas plant and factories at Clichy, where some of the men may work. Recreational sailboats can be seen on the river.

When Seurat studied the location in preparation for the painting, there would have been a path along the embankment as well as run-down houses and villas, boatyards, workshops and lower-class cafes and restaurants. The exposed sand in the middle of the riverbank on the left is the reason for the painting sometimes being titled Une baignade (‘a bathing place’). The term did not imply a middle-class idea of recreation by the water, but instead signified a place of work. It was used, for example on maps of the river, to indicate places where horses and dogs could be bathed and watered. It was this practice, and the dragging of boats in and out of the water, that formed the sandy gully.

Although Seurat was often drawn to similar subjects and sites as the Impressionists, and employed the same colour theories, his treatment was radically different. Not only is this picture much larger than most Impressionist paintings, but it was executed in the studio rather than outdoors in just one or two sessions. In contrast to the spontaneity of Impressionist works, Seurat’s picture was meticulously planned. He completed a series of preparatory oil sketches of the site and numerous conté crayon life drawings of the figures. Of these, some 13 oil sketches and 10 drawings survive. Two oil Studies for Bathers at Asnières are also in the National Gallery’s collection.

The men’s clothing (the bowler hat, boots and sleeveless vest) and demeanour (for example, the slight slouch of the seated boy and his blunt profile) suggest that some of them are either workers or lower middle class. However, none are engaged in traditionally ‘masculine’ activities such as labour or sport – even the two in the water do not appear to be swimming. By way of social contrast, a bourgeois couple, complete with parasol and top hat, are being ferried across the river in a boat bearing a triclore flag. Their oarsman is the only person in the picture who is working. Although the painting does not convey an obvious political statement, Seurat’s depiction of working-class recreation – as distinct from Impressionist scenes of bourgeois leisure (of which the boating couple are a reminder) – was a challenge to artistic tradition, as the grand scale was more appropriate for history and academic painting.

The men and boys on the riverbank are as immobile as sculptures. Seurat also shows them in profile, as if in a frieze, their smooth bodies defined by unbroken outlines. Although they occupy the same small area of riverbank, each seems absorbed in his own thoughts, neither engaging with each other nor with us. Suffused with bright but hazy sunlight, the scene has an almost eerie stillness, as if time has been suspended and all movement temporarily frozen. Seurat has enhanced this effect by not showing activities one might expect to see – for example, no horses are being bathed (although several of the preparatory studies do include them) – and by presenting this stretch of the river as if it were a well-maintained park.

Seurat had a traditional academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he learned to draw from classical sculptures; several of the bathers’ poses reflect this. On the far right, the boy standing in the water with his hands cupped to his mouth evokes the Greek water god Triton blowing his conch shell. Seurat also studied paintings in the Louvre, and in this picture the simplicity of forms, use of regular shapes defined by light and the pale, almost alabaster skin tones recall paintings by the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca, especially his Arezzo frescoes.

But there are also more contemporary associations. Seurat admired Puvis de Chavannes (with whom he was compared), and aspects of his painting are also features of Puvis’s work: its scale (which recalls a mural rather than an easel painting), the semi-nude figures arranged in lateral planes like a classical relief and a composition based upon clear geometrical principles. Puvis’s painting Doux pays (‘gentle landscape’) (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne), which was exhibited at the 1882 Salon, particularly anticipated elements of Seurat’s picture. However, unlike Puvis, who kept modernity at a distance, Seurat found order, harmony and perhaps even a heroic grandeur in the modern world.

Seurat was soon to go on to create pointillism, a technique that employed tiny dots of complementary colours. This picture is not painted in the pointillist style of his later works, such as The Channel of Gravelines, although he did repaint parts of it using this technique – for example, the orange hat was reworked later with spots of yellow and blue. Despite the painting’s classicising features, Seurat’s application of paint is modern. For example, he used broad brushstrokes for the water. This follows the precedent of Monet and Renoir, who had both painted this part of the river – the railway bridge in the background is the same as that in Renoir’s The Skiff, a painting also based upon complementary colours.

Seurat’s painting was rejected when submitted to the Salon, and he subsequently exhibited it at the newly formed Salon des Artistes Indépendants. His second monumental picture, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte of 1885 (Art Institute of Chicago), shows the same stretch of river but looking across it from the other side. The clump of trees on the right behind the bourgeois couple in the boat (who may have been added later as a link between the two pictures) is the tip of the island. La Grande Jatte was a location for middle-class leisure from which the workers we see here are separated both spatially and socially. Two oil Studies for La Grand Jatte are also in the National Gallery’s collection.

Audio description

4 min 50 sec
Listen to an audio description of Georges Seurat's 'Bathers at Asnières'

Transcript

This is a description of 'Bathers at Asnières' by Georges Seurat, painted in 1884. It is an enormous landscape, 2 metres high by 3 metres wide, oil on canvas in an ornately patterned gold frame.

The painting features seven seemingly male figures, some dressed, some in swim wear. Five are lounging on the bank of the river Seine on a warm, sunny day, the other two in the water.

The top third of the canvas is light blue sky with trees to the left and right. It is flecked with dabs of white, either to suggest clouds or to give the sky an unfocused appearance. The lower two thirds of the painting are divided diagonally from top left to bottom right. On the left, the grassy riverbank, and on the right, the river. The whole scene has been painted with a variety of visible brushstrokes. The array of dabs, flicks, and sweeps of paint give the scene a shimmering, slightly hazy quality.

In the far distance, on the right of the horizon, is a cluster of large, white and pink-orange buildings. Their tall, thin chimneys, one of which emits a large cloud of grey smoke, identify them as factories. To the left of the horizon runs a bridge – a low white plume of steam suggesting a train travelling across it.

One figure dominates the scene in the centre, sitting on the riverbank trailing his legs in the water. He is in profile, facing right, shoulders slumped. He wears just a pair of light red shorts. His skin is a pale whitish-pink. He has ear-length reddish-brown hair, his face in shadow, only his mouth visible by the profile of his lips. His large Roman nose gives him the appearance of an old emperor depicted on a coin. But the clothes that lie on the grass around him give the impression of a work uniform: a white coat, brown shoes and trousers, and a cream straw hat. Could he be a factory worker on his break?

Another more neatly folded pile of the same kind of clothing lies the grass on the far left edge of the painting, perhaps belonging to one of the two figures standing in the water. One has his back to us, almost submerged to his shoulders. The other, nearest to us, stands waist high, giving a glimpse of his red shorts. He wears a reddish-orange hat, the low brim almost completely covering his black hair. Seurat has picked out the shadow on the back of the hat with blue dots, a brief appearance of the technique that would come to be called pointillism. The figure, more boy than man, cups his hands to his mouth as if calling to someone.

Moving back onto the grassy bank on the left, three figures in the distance sit hugging their knees or sprawl out.

In the bottom left foreground, a fourth figure, much closer, lies on his side, his back to us. His head is to the left, propped up on his hand. He wears a white coat, dark trousers and boots, and a black bowler hat. A small reddish-brown dog, lies at his back, looking at the water.

The river is populated by five boats. Three have white sails while two are rowed. One of these is a long, slim racing boat, traveling to the right, rowed by a figure bent double with effort. The other moves left at a seemingly more leisurely pace, a man in a straw hat punting. The French flag hangs limp at the front of the boat - its passengers a man in a black coat and top hat, and a woman partly hidden behind a white sun parasol. Their clothes mark them out as bourgeois, middle-class, but they are so much smaller, and seem insignificant compared to the central figure sitting on the riverbank. He is the focus of Seurat’s painting - an anonymous working-class man, at rest, depicted on a monumental scale.

In the bottom left-hand corner of the painting, the artist has signed his last name, “Seurat”.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Bathers at Asnières
Artist: Georges Seurat
Artist dates: 1859 - 1891
Date made: 1884
Medium and support: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 201 × 300 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1924
Inventory number: NG3908
Location: Room 44
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 19th-century French Frame

Provenance

With the painter’s family after his death in 1891. Acquired by Félix Fénéon (1861–1944), probably in 1900, and retained by him until about the time of his retirement from the Galerie Bernheim‐Jeune in 1924. Bought in that year by the Trustees of the Courtauld Fund from the Independent Gallery, London (Percy Moore Turner (1877–1950)). Transferred from the Tate Gallery, 1961.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Martin Davies, with additions and some revisions by Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: French School: Early 19th Century, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, etc.’, London 1970 and supplemented by Isobel Muir; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2018

Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cézanne

The National Gallery (London)

17 September 2018 - 20 January 2019

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M.F. Zimmermann, 'Die "Erfindung" Pieros und seine Wahlverwandtschaft mit Seurat: Piero della Francesca and His Legacy', Studies in the History of Art, 1995, pp. 268-301
1996

R. Brettell, 'Thomas Eakins and the Male Nude in French Vanguard Painting 1850-1890', in D. Bolger and S. Cash (eds), Thomas Eakins and the Swimming Picture, Fort Worth 1996, pp. 80-97
1997

D. Bomford, Conservation of Paintings, London 1997
1997

P. Smith, Seurat and the Avant-Garde, New Haven 1997
1997

J. Leighton and R. Thomson, Seurat and the Bathers, (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 2 July - 28 September 1997), London 1997
1998

D. Goodway (ed.), Herbert Read Reassessed, Liverpool 1998
2000

E. Balas, 'A Contribution Towards the Understanding of Seurat's Late Works', Gazette des beaux-arts, CXLII/136, 2000, pp. 155-8
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2001

R.L. Herbert, Seurat: Drawings and Paintings, New Haven 2001
2003

J. Kirby et al., 'Seurat's Painting Practice: Theory, Development and Technology', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, XXIV, 2003, pp. 4-37
2005

D. Lobstein, 'Un salon de Babel: La première exposition de la Société des artistes indépendants', La Revue du Musée d'Orsay, 20, 2005, pp. 38-51
2005

R. Thomson, 'Seurat et la IIIe République: Opposant, caricaturiste ou supporter?', La Revue du Musée d'Orsay, 21, 2005, pp. 6-25
2006

M. Frensch (ed.), Seurats Brücke: Vom Impressionismus zur Moderne, Schaffhausen 2006
2006

C. Riopelle, Manet to Picasso, London 2006
2007

J. Hauptman, Georges Seurat: The Drawings (exh. cat. Museum of Modern Art, 28 October 2007 - 7 January 2008), New York 2007
2007

T.J. Clark, 'The Environs of Paris', in J. House, Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: An Anthology, Berkeley 2007
2008

M. Young, 'Heroic Indolence: Realism and the Politics of Time in Raffaëlli's "Absinthe Drinkers"', Art Bulletin, XC/2, 2008, pp. 235-59
2008

M.F. Bocquillon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, e i neoimpressionisti (exh. cat. Palazzo Reale (Milan), 10 October 2008 - 25 June 2009), Milan 2008

About this record

If you know more about this work or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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Georges Seurat's painting 'Bathers at Asnières' is a simple picture of men and boys relaxing by the River Seine and yet there is something unsettling about this scene. The people seem both present and absent - there and not there.

Art historian Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen explores Seurat's figures to explain how, by painting them in this way, he undid centuries-old beliefs about how people should appear in art.

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What feels strange about the people in Seurat’s painting? | National Gallery

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More works by Georges Seurat

(Showing 6 of 11 works)

A River Bank (The Seine at Asnières)

Georges Seurat

This small panel may be linked to Seurat’s earliest sketches and ideas for Bathers at Asnières (1883–4), although it is not normally included in the 13 sketches which have been tied to that painting.The carefully organised geometry of the scene, which divides the picture into distinct sections, c...

Room 44

Clothes on the Grass: Study for 'Bathers at Asnières'

Georges Seurat

Room 44

Landscape, Seated Man, Study for La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat

While working on his meticulous paintings in the studio, Seurat also made small studies outdoors on wooden panels, which he called croquetons. He used these panels to record first-hand the atmospheric effects of nature, its play of light and colour, before transforming them into large-scale canva...

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Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp

Georges Seurat

Not on display

Study for 'Bathers at Asnières'

Georges Seurat

Of the small panels in the National Gallery’s collection related to Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, this oil sketch on wood is perhaps the one most closely connected with the final painting. Unlike other sketches, which concentrate on atmospheric effects or the landscape, Seurat’s focus here is alm...

Room 44

Study for 'La Grande Jatte'

Georges Seurat

This is one of the earliest studies for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte of 1884–6 (Art Institute of Chicago), and was very likely painted on location. As this sketch was painted in the morning, the sunlight and shadows are the reverse of other studies and of the final painting itself, which shows the...

Room 44

Study for 'La Grande Jatte'

Georges Seurat

Seurat produced many oil sketches and drawings as studies for his monumental painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte of 1884–6 (Art Institute of Chicago). Many of these concentrate on the landscape but others, including this one, focus on the scale and position of figures within the final picture.He...

Not on display

The Channel of Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe

Georges Seurat

This is one of four paintings Seurat produced in 1890 near the town of Gravelines, a small port on the northern French coast between Calais and Dunkirk. Positioned on the sand dunes of Petit-Fort-Philippe, we see the shore in the morning light after the receding tide has left a broad expanse of o...

Not on display

The Morning Walk

Georges Seurat

This panel was most likely painted in 1885 and relates to a medium-size canvas, The Seine at Courbevoie (now in a private collection in Paris). Seurat may have painted it before he decided to produce a finished picture of this particular view of the river, or it may be a preparatory study.The ver...

Room 44

The Rainbow: Study for 'Bathers at Asnières'

Georges Seurat

This is the only sketch for Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières that includes a rainbow, which was painted over the sky once the paint had dried. Although perhaps a rather contrived image, the mottled sky suggests Seurat may have seen a rainbow. It is evidence of his attention to particular effects of l...

Room 44

The Seine seen from La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat

The island of La Grande Jatte and the views from it across the river Seine were a rich source of pictorial subjects for Seurat during the 1880s. He was especially attracted to this location, in part because of the pictorial forms and structures it offered, such as the horizontal of the river and...

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You've viewed 6 of 11 works