Volume 44, Number 14 · September 25, 1997
Seurat and the Sewers
By James Fenton
Impressionists on the Seine: A Celebration of Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party 21, 1996- February 9, 1997.
exhibition at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., September, Catalog of the exhibition edited by Eliza E. Rathbone, by Katherine Rothkopf, by Richard R. Brettell, by Charles S. Moffett
Counterpoint, 264 pp., $29.00 (paper)
Seurat and the Bathers
exhibition at the National Gallery, London, July 2-September 28, 1997., Catalog of the exhibition by John Leighton, by Richard Thompson
National Gallery/Yale University Press, 168 pp., $50.00
Seurat and the Avant-Garde
by Paul Smith
Yale University Press, 211 pp., $60.00
In 1857 Charles Daubigny went to Asnières, on the northwest outskirts of Paris, and bought himself a flat-bottomed rowing boat which had been fitted out as a ferry, and which he could use as a traveling studio. Together with a friend, and with his son as cabin boy (for the boat was large enough to need at least two oarsmen), he took a trip down the Seine, which he recorded for the amusement of family and friends in a series of drawings, some of which he later worked up into etchings, published in 1862 as Voyage en bateau. The series begins with the dinner before departure from Asnières, which is shown as taking place in a modest, timeless-looking inn, under a vine or some sort of pergola.
Review, 3905 words
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