Bathers at Asnières

1884

Oil on canvas, 201 × 300 cm. The National Gallery, London

Young men and boys rest and swim on a riverbank at the edge of an industrial suburb. It was the painter's first picture on the scale of a major museum canvas.

The figures sit in profile, still and solid, like a frieze on a classical building. Ordinary leisure on the Seine is given the calm weight usually kept for history painting.
The official Salon rejected it, so it hung at the first Indépendants show that same year.
Look across the water: factory chimneys at Clichy rise behind the bathers.
He later repainted some passages in dots, adding yellow and blue spots to the orange hat.
It was bought with the Courtauld Fund in 1924.

Unlike Impressionist pictures made outdoors, it was planned through oil sketches and drawings and painted in the studio. The working-class bathers contrast with a well-dressed couple in a boat.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art