The Seine at Courbevoie

The Seine at Courbevoie (1885) was painted during the summer before Seurat completed La Grande Jatte, as he continued his intensive study of the Seine near Paris. Courbevoie, directly across the river from La Grande Jatte, offered views of the suburban river landscape that had occupied him since Bathers at Asnières. The systematic dotwork here is more fully developed than in the earlier Asnières studies, reflecting rapid refinement of his divisionist method during 1885.

River reflections, foliage, and sky are each rendered in clearly differentiated zones of divisionist dotwork. The horizontal composition and reflective water surface gave Seurat ideal conditions for demonstrating how simultaneous contrast could be applied consistently across a complex plein-air scene.