Kleider auf dem Gras

This is tiny, a wood panel no bigger than a sheet of paper. In 1883 Georges Seurat, then 23, was preparing his first big canvas, the Bathers at Asnieres, a scene of working men resting by the Seine on the industrial edge of Paris. Before he built that picture in the studio he went out to the riverbank and made small oil sketches like this one, which he called croquetons. Here he has left the bathers out entirely and looked only at the ground, a bundle of shed clothes lying in the sun on the grass. Everything he learned about light on these little panels went into the large canvas that made his name.