Geroge Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1884

During the later parts of the 1870s, Seurat was a student of the French School of Fine Arts. It was this school that taught him to create sketches and drawings of subjects before putting them directly on a painting. It was thought that this method would allow a smooth preparatory phase in which artists could identify issues so that they could fix these problems and make the final painting closer to perfection.

Asnières is an industrial suburb west located at the Seine River. It is west of Paris. Seurat used live models and created 10 drawings as well as 14 oil sketches. Using these as reference, he created the painting. This painting was the first of Seurat's large scale compositions and came out of a long process.

Painted in 1884, Bathers at Asnières was created before Seurat came up with his pointillist technique. However, after a few years Seurat reworking the painting to include several dots of contrasting color to instill a more luminous effect.