Bathers at Asnières Poster

This poster features Seurat's Bathers at Asnières.

Asnières is an industrial suburb west of Paris on the River Seine. Bathers at Asnières shows a group of young workmen taking their leisure by the river.

Bathers at Asnières was the first of Seurat's large-scale compositions. He drew conté crayon studies for individual figures using live models, and made small oil sketches on site which he used to help design the composition and record effects of light and atmosphere. Some 14 oil sketches and 10 drawings survive. The final composition, painted in the studio, combines information from both.

Bathers at Asnières by Georges Seurat is the focus of the Take One Picture schools course, 2012/13. Take One Picture looks at ways of using paintings in the classroom as a starting point for delivering many areas of the National Curriculum. This principle aligns closely with the DCSF Primary National Strategy: Excellence and Enjoyment, which supports a holistic approach to the curriculum by exploiting the links between subject areas.