Bathers at Asnières[edit]
He spent 1883 working on his first major painting—a large canvas titled Bathers at Asnières,[10] a monumental work showing young men relaxing by the Seine in a working-class suburb of Paris.[11] Although influenced in its use of color and light tone by Impressionism, the painting with its smooth, simplified textures and carefully outlined, rather sculptural figures, shows the continuing impact of his neoclassical training; the critic Paul Alexis described it as a "faux Puvis de Chavannes".[12] Seurat also departed from the Impressionist ideal by preparing for the work with a number of drawings and oil sketches before starting on the canvas in his studio.[12]
Bathers at Asnières was rejected by the Paris Salon, and instead he showed it at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in May 1884. Soon, however, disillusioned by the poor organisation of the Indépendants, Seurat and some other artists he had met through the group – including Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet and Paul Signac – set up a new organisation, the Société des Artistes Indépendants.[10] Seurat's new ideas on pointillism were to have an especially strong influence on Signac, who subsequently painted in the same idiom.
After a brief spell in the army Seurat returned to the tutelage of Lehmann, but by now his views on art were beginning to diverge a great deal from his mentor. After leaving the school Seurat moved with friend and fellow artist Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean to the island of La Grande Jatte in 1881. This move served as one of Seurat's biggest inspirations and it was on the island that the artist painted one of the defining pieces of his career.