GEORGES SEURAT -2

May I introduce the French artist Georges Seurat (pronounced ZHORZH  SIR-AA).  Born into a wealthy family in Paris, his father was a legal official.  Seurat studied  art with Justin Lequiene, a sculptor, gave one year of service to a military academy, returning to Paris in 1880 where he shared a small studio with two student friends before moving to a studio of his own.  Seurat was fascinated by the science of color and the process by which the human eye and brain resolve the impression of color as seen in Nature.  The technique he developed was to apply paint to the canvas not as continuous brushstrokes, but as tiny points of color.  The individual dots are invisible, but the proportions of dots of different colors in any one area create the impression of a certain shade.  The dots of paint are the same as the pixels we hear about today.

He spent 1883 on his first major painting--a huge canvas (6.5 feet x 10 feet) titled Bathers at Asnieres (pronounced AHN-YAIR) which we will learn about today.  Asnieres was an industrial suburb northwest of Paris on the River Seine.  
 

Bathers at Asnieres (1884)

In this picture Seurat shows us factory workers relaxing in the sunshine along the Seine River.  Five men on the river bank and two boys bathing in the water.  One of the men is lying on the grassy riverbank beside the one dressed in white on the left side. The curious thing about this painting is its stillness...they all appear absorbed in their own thoughts or watching what is happening in the water.  Only their profiles show, not one figure in the painting faces the viewer.  Seurat identifies the working class by their clothing, as we can see by the hats, boots and sleeveless vest.  The factories in the background are most likely where the men work.  

Seurat clearly portrays France's late 19th century contrast in the social classes.  He snuck in a critical depiction of the upper class.  If we look closely, there is a lady with a parasol and a man wearing a top hat being ferried across the river in a boat bearing a tricolor French flag.  (Might the absurdly large flag for such a small boat, suggest ironically that its passengers are representatives of France and are more valuable than the idling workers whom they are leaving behind?) Their oarsman is the only person in the picture who is shown to be working.  Just below the bridge on the left of the river are a couple of sailing boats, and on the right toward us is a third sailboat near the shore.

In the 1880s, the only subjects deemed appropriate for such a large painting were religious, historical or classical subjects.  Certainly not members of the lower orders lounging about on the banks of the Seine.  But, in capturing the moment on such a large scale and in portraying working men, Seurat was challenging the right of the establishment to dictate what was or was not a suitable subject for art.  It's quite possible that there was an underlying political statement in the painting.

Note how the surface of the water is darker or brighter along the outlines of the characters, making them appear more three-dimensional.  Also, how Seurat painted halos or auras around the figures in the water.  This painting shows a transitional moment captured in oil paint, as Georges Seurat worked on the evolving pointillism technique.  Crosshatch brushwork blends with patches of dots to create this peaceful scene.  Cross-hatching is a method of line drawing that describes light and shadow.  The representation of light utilizes the white or openness of the page, while shadow is created by a density of crossed lines. 

The background smokestacks and factories remind the figures in the painting that their toil is never far off.

Looking at the clothing and manner of the figures, they are clearly among the lower class in the suburb, who relax at the end of a hard-working day.  The Academy of Moral and Political Science declared in 1874 that the key in developing a moral code among the working class was a day of rest.  Thus, Sunday had been declared a day off, when people would spend time with their family.  However, the working men preferred to have Monday as their day off and spend it with friends.  That is why the figures in the painting are all men, except for a woman on the ferry.  The female was included in the picture in order to outline the difference between the classes, the lower one and the rich.

I'm intrigued by the way Seurat painted the clothes that are lying on the ground next to the guy sitting on the edge of the bank.....a straw hat with band to match his trunks, dark boots, and trousers with a big white towel thrown over them, which helps draw the eye to him.  

The painting Bathers of Asnieres resides today as a highlight on the wall of The London National Gallery Museum.  It is a beautiful painting.  Nothing in it is glamorized, Nature is not idealized.  The figures are ordinary men, not particularly handsome, just men.  It is life, unidealized and unromanticized.  A masterpiece.