Brettell's Social Class

A Summer Sunday on the Island of Grande Jatte
Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1884
Georges Seurat, A Summer Sunday on the Island of Grande Jatte, 1884
BY ZOE BROUS

In Richard R. Brettell’s Modern Art, Brettell argues that Georges Seurat created a direct location link and painted social class division between A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte and Bathers at Asnieres. A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte includes Seurat’s famous strokes of dots technique. Seurat possesed interest with the social class of the Third Republic of France. He includes bourgeois (middle class materialistic) men and women. This painting also includes people of diverse ages. In this painting, both men and women appear. The upper class men and women’s clothing is proper, and their position remain straight and upright. The background displays and relaxing park. However, this painting has always been controversial. The fisherwoman and the women with the pet monkey have been identified as prostitutes because of their attributes. The women reading the book receives relations with the surrounding men. This painting scandalousness deepens because the prostitutes appear on a holy day.

Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres displays different class, position, background, and activities than A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte. Rather than pastime, the males use the body of water for bathing. Therefore, all of the boys could be homeless or earn scarce income. In the painting, only men bathe. The gender and age of the subjects displays the working class of primarily adolescent boys. The position of the men appears laid back and casual. The setting shows urban details of factory smoke and railway tracks. This painting receives an everyday scene of poverty rather than a Sunday pastime. Brettell believes both paintings confront the difference of social class structure pastimes. 


Brettell argures Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres is located directly across the river from A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte. The sailboat race acts as the clear link between the two paintings. Both paintings include identical dimensions and similar techniques. The bathers look east to the same Island. A adolescent male in the Bathers at Asnieres appears to call out to a person on the Island of the Grande Jatte. I agree with Brettell’s theory that both paintings focus on the division of social class. However, I believe that Seurat drew inspiration from his first painting, and there’s no direct location link between the two paintings. Although Seurat painted Bathers at Asnieres before A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte, the painting with upper class men and women receives more praise and popularity, even decades later. I think it’s interesting that the painting with the higher class receives more praise, despite the fact that the two paintings use identical techniques.
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The Bathers at Asnieres

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat, The Bathers at Asnieres, 1884
By KATHERINE GRABOWSKY

Georges Seurat was most well-known for his use of pointillism. One of his most famous works of art is Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte was painted in 1886. This painting created conversation, not because of the style but because of the imagery. Some people hated the painting while others loved it. The painting features wealthy looking individuals in France dressed in elaborate gowns or suits, relaxing by the river. The counterpart of the painting is what makes it interesting.

The Bathers at Asnieres, painted in 1884, opposes Sunday Afternoon and brings into question the idea of class. A boat race can be seen in the river in both paintings. This seems to link the two together and suggest that they occur at the same time. Another weird aspect of the paintings that is most likely not a coincidence, is that both works of art are exactly the same dimensions. The two works of art look remarkably similar in style and ratio, but they provoke drastically different themes. While his later painting depicts wealthy individuals relaxing in a life of leisure, the earlier painting brings the themes of poverty and unemployment to the foreground. In The Bathers at Asnieres, the three men at the front of the painting relax in the grass while two more boys wade in the river. Crumpled clothes lay underneath one of the boys, which suggest that these clothes do not require extensive caretaking. Their clothes are ill fitting and simple as opposed to the elaborate outfits of the later painting. In the background, there is a bridge and factory chimneys that blow steam, suggesting industrial technology. The men in the painting are clearly from a lower class and embody poverty.


Much like day vs. night, Seurat’s paintings oppose each other. He invites the viewer to make a connection and compare the lifestyles. While the later painting attracted much attention and conversation, its themes are dependent on The Bathers at Asnieres. The earlier painting may not have as much fame, but it is necessary in comparing the two. Seurat invokes themes of class in his two pointillism paintings of the mid-1880s.
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