Final Study for "Bathers at Asnières"

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1883

Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891)

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 240
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Georges Seurat
Title: Final Study for "Bathers at Asnières"
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1883
Medium: Oil on panel
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower right: Seurat
Dimensions: 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.)
Credit Line: Gift of the Adele R. Levy Fund, Inc.
Reference Number: 1962.578
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/20199/manifest.json

Henri Dorra and John Rewald, Seurat: Seurat: l’oeuvre peint biographie et catalogue critique (Paris: Les Beaux-arts, 1959), 100 no. 97 (ill.).
Ceasar M. de Hauke, Seurat et Son Oeuvre (Paris: Grund, 1961), 58-59 no. 93.
Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1962-1963 (Chicago: Art Institute, 1963), 13.
W. Homer, Seurat and the Science of Painting, 1963.
Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 4 (1963-64), 4 (ill.), 5.
J. Rewald, Post Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, 3rd ed., revised (New York, 1978), 74 (ill.).
Richard R. Brettell, French Impressions (New York: Art Institute and Harry Abrams1987), 87.
Richard Tilston, Seurat (London: Bison Books, 1991), 70-71.
Sarah Carr-Gomm, Seurat (London: Studio Editions, 1993), 16 (ill.), 142, no. 16.
Paul Smith, Seurat and the Avant-Garde (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 75, 76 fig. 90.
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute, 2000), 77 (ill.).
Sylvie Patry, Le Néo-Imoressionnisme de Seurat á Paul Klee, Exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2005), 16, 78, 108, 109 (ill.).
Richard Shiff, “Seurat Distracted,” George Seurat: The Drawings, Exh. cat. (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007), 26, 205 (ill.), pl. 103.
The Age of Impressionism at the Art Institute of Chicago (New Haven and London, 2008),111 (ill.), cat. 50.
Bregje Gerritse and Jacquelyn N. Coutre, Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: Along the Seine, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 100, 102 fig. 65, 198, back cover ill.

New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, What they said” - Postscript to Art Criticism; For the Benefit of the Museum of Modern Art on its 20th Anniversary, November 28 - December 17, 1949, cat. 6.
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, French Painting 1100-1900, October 18-December 2, 1951, cat. 92.
New York, Wildenstein & Co., A Loan Exhibition of Seurat and His Friends, November 18-December 26, 1953, cat. 4 (ill.)
Art Institute of Chicago, Seurat: Paintings and Drawings, January 16-March 7, 1958, cat. 57; New York, Museum of Modern Art, March 24-May 11, 1958.
New York, Guggenheim Museum, Neo-Impressionism, February 7 - April 8, 1968, no cat. no.
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Georges Seurat 1859-1891, April 9–August 12, 1991; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 24, 1991 - January 12, 1992, cat. 110.
London, The National Gallery, Seurat and the Bathers, July 2-September 28, 1997, cat. 60.
Art Institute of Chicago, Seurat and the Making of ‘La Grande Jatte,’ June 16-September 19, 2004, cat. 20.
Paris, France, Musée d’Orsay, Le Néo-Impressionnisme de Seurat á Paul Klee, March 14- July 10, 2005.
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, George Seurat: The Drawings, October 9, 2007- January 7, 2008, pl. 103.
Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Museum of Art, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–November 2, 2008, cat. 50 (ill.).
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Georges Seurat: Figures in Space, October 2, 2009-January 17, 2020; Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle, February 11-May 9, 2010.
Art Institute of Chicago, Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape, May 14-Sep. 4, 2023, fig. 65; Amsterdam, Van gogh Museum, Van Gogh Along the Seine, Oct. 13-Jan. 14, 2024.

The artist; given to Robert Caze (died 1886), Paris [this and the following according to Dorra and Rewald 1959, 100; see also Seurat’s list of owners of his works where Caze is named as the owner of “Esquisse de la baignade,” reprinted in New York 1991, 380]; by descent to his widow, Louise Caze (died 1887), Paris. Gary. W.H. Sprenger, Paris and Essen [according to email from Claudine Godts, Wildenstein, Oct. 28, 2021; copy in curatorial object file]; Wildenstein and Co., New York, by 1948; sold to David M. Levy (died 1977) and Adele R. Levy (died 1960), New York, 1949; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1962.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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