In the spring of 1883, the young Georges Seurat exhibited his first monumental composition, The Bathers at Asnieres, now in the National Gallery, London. Unlike Auguste Renoir and others, who created fetching groups of naked female bathers frolicking in an Arcadian nature, Seurat chose to represent a diverse group of working-class males on an unpicturesque stretch of the Seine near the industrial landscape of Clichy.

Even though Seurat was attracted to the stridently working-class nature of his theme, the style he chose for its expression alludes to a dead aristocratic society: Seurat sought to idealize his common subjects by treating them in a hieratic manner that has roots in Egyptian art. The figures are represented mostly in strict profile, resembling those from a tomb frieze, and are arranged with a considered rhythm of volumes and voids, masses and spaces. Even the surface seems divided into invisible geometric areas, so deliberate is the positioning of each separate form. How far we have come from the looseness, informality, and sensuality of the essentially middle-class expression that was Impressionism.

Before painting his enormous canvas, Seurat made a great many drawings and oil studies on panel that include analyses of single figures as well as of major portions of the compositions. The small panel in the Art Institute is the final compositional study for the large painting in London. Although there are slight differences in the relative scale of the figures and their positions in respect to one another, this pastel is closer to the finished painting than any other preparatory work. Seurat seems to have considered the small panel finished. He signed it forth-rightly at the lower right and exhibited it twice in his lifetime.

The facture, or handling of paint, on the panel varies greatly, with many dancing brushstrokes that relate to Impressionism. Yet, the overall effect appears orderly and premeditated, as if the young artist had worked out almost everything in advance by the time he made this tiny study. One wonders why he bothered to make it at all; he was probably not interested in the poses of the figures because he had already determined them using models in his studio. Clearly, Seurat wanted not only to convey the static calm and intensity of the figures, but also particular qualities of light observable only at the site. How appealing, therefore, it must have been for him to work on this small scale directly in front of the landscape, enabling him to infuse his entire composition with the light of day. Any lover of Seurat will readily admit that there is more life and light in the Art Institute’s miniature version of the great masterpiece of Seurat's early career than in the finished canvas for which it was a study.