Winter

Seurat painted this on a small wooden panel he could hold in one hand, the kind of quick outdoor study he called a croqueton. It dates from about 1883, when he was 23 and still teaching himself. Bare trees, flat winter light, set down in short separate strokes. Within a year he would begin Bathers at Asnieres, his first wall-sized canvas, and soon after break his color into the small dots that made his name. These little panels are where that method was quietly worked out, a patch of cold ground and a row of trees at a time.