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From Delacroix to Matisse: Drawings from the Algiers Museum of Art

 Planning the composition of Bathing at Asnieres, Seurat made field trips to the island of La Grande Jatte; the approximate site can be checked on any map of the Paris suburbs. But this first of his big canvases was executed in the studio, merely drawing upon the preliminary studies made outdoors. Coming from Paris, Beaubourg wrote to Coquiot, the island was on one's right, more or less opposite the spot where people swim on Sundays, halfway between the Bineau bridge and the northern tip of the island, just where the river makes a sharp bend toward Courbevoie and Asnieres. Seurat was often to be seen painting there. Jules Christophe left this short description of Bathing at Asnieres: Water, air, the railroad bridge in the distance, boats, shimmering trees, seven men and boys in various stages of undress, either in the water or sprawled upon the grass. Not many people saw the canvas (at the Salon des Independants it was relegated to the bar), but it represented a great deal of work. According to Signac this large composition, for which Seurat had made so many preliminary drawings and oil studies, was painted in broad, smooth brush strokes placed atop one another, in a palette of ochres and more vivid colors. Like Delacroix, he blended his colors in individual areas. Signac goes on to sum up Seurat's method as follows: Observance of the laws of contrast, methodical separation of the elements (light, shadow, local color, reactions). This is a hazy work, saturated with summer heat. In the distance loom factories and their smokestacks. We feel the oppressiveness of the atmosphere, the immobility of the scene. The light here weighs more heavily than the shadows. In an article, Arsene Alexandre refers to the enormous amount of work that went into this painting: Bathing at Asnieres made it clear that Seurat was the one younger artist capable of putting his back into it-one of the few capable of organizing a vast composition utilizing hitherto unknown techniques. The many partial studies that went to produce this work have been brought together into a coherent, unified whole. The summer silence is broken only by the boy who is cupping his hands to make a sound like a boat horn. This is vacation time, rest after toil. The distribution of blacks and whites, light tones and dark, strait and curving lines (the latter predominating) is very elaborate. The light, the sun, the greenery, the buildings, the water, the people, the boats gliding along in the background- everything gives off the torpid heat of a summer afternoon.