Seurat and the Bathers /

Published to accompany an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, 2 July - 28 September 1997.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-163) and index.

Foreword / Neil MacGregor -- 1. Seurat: The Early Years -- The Early Drawings -- Paintings and Studies in Oil -- Seurat and Colour Theory -- 2. The Bathers: Making a Masterpiece -- The Oil Studies -- The Drawings for the Bathers -- Making the Final Picture -- The Evolution of the Composition -- Colour and Colour Effect in the Bathers -- 3. Seurat's Choices: The Bathers and its Contexts -- Adapting the Ideal -- Representing the Modern -- The 'Modern' Landscape -- 1884: Rejection and Response -- Characterising the Bathers -- The Echo of the Bathers -- Representing the Suburbs after 1884 -- The Continuity of the Classical.

In Seurat and The Bathers the authors discuss the various choices Seurat made with regard to subject, format and technique in preparing this monumental painting. They relate Seurat's working methods - the preparatory oil sketches and drawings - and the painting's physical nature - colour, brushwork and surface - to his academic training, his study of optical theory, the development of his distinctive drawing style, and his early interest in plein-air oil sketching and impressionism. Stylistically, Seurat responded to the French tradition of monumental figure painting and also to contemporary artists, both Salon painters and Impressionists, arriving at a paradoxical but subtle new synthesis. Finally the authors consider the subject matter of the Bathers in relation to other nineteenth-century representations of middle- and working-class life and leisure activities in the Parisian suburbs, particularly at Asnieres.