A Man Leaning on a Parapet

This little wood panel, barely the size of a postcard, is one of the first things Georges Seurat ever painted, around 1881. He was in his early twenties and still years away from the dotted technique that would make his name. When he died suddenly at 31, this turned up in his studio inventory listed simply as panel number one. A single man leans on a parapet, absorbed in nothing in particular, and through the leaves behind him you can just make out the domed roof of the Institut de France, across the Seine from the Louvre. Already he is working out the things he cared about, flat bold shapes and the exact fall of light, on a surface you could hold in one hand.