The Rainbow: Study for 'Bathers at Asnières'

Seurat was 23 when he carried a small wooden panel down to the Seine at Asnières, a north-western suburb of Paris where new factories stood along the river and clerks and workmen came out to the bank on their days off. He made about 14 of these little studies on the spot before starting the big Bathers at Asnières, and this is the only one with a rainbow in it. He added it over sky paint that had already dried, most likely after watching one come and go. The finished picture, two metres by three and hanging in the same museum, has no rainbow at all. This panel is 15 centimetres tall, and it reached the National Gallery in 1995 as a gift from the collector Heinz Berggruen.