Georges Seurat

A grassy riverbank cuts across the lower left corner of this painting, in front of a river that fills most of this horizonal landscape. The scene is loosely painted with visible, sometimes thick, brushstrokes mostly in tones of ivory white, sky, denim, and cobalt blue, and spring green. Much of the detail, especially in the people’s faces, is indistinct. The people all appear to have light, peach-colored skin. Three people sit along the steep riverbank, which is indicated with a triangle of asparagus and sage greens. The person to our left wears a marine-blue shirt and a navy-blue cap. The person at the center of this trio sits with their back to us, wearing a dark, plum-purple garment and cap. The third person, closest to us, sits with knees bent, facing the river, wearing a white shirt, black pants, and a navy-blue cap. A small patch of asparagus green farther up the left edge of the composition suggests that the riverbank extends into the distance, and a swipe of dark blue paint could be another person sitting there. The river is painted with horizontal, visible strokes of blue, pea green, tan, and a few touches of petal pink. Three people stand in the water near the bank. Two of them are bare-chested, and one is in the water up to the chin. The head and neck of a white horse wearing a dark bridle enters the scene in the lower right corner, presumably wading in the water. An area stretching across the right half of the composition on the far side of the river reads as trees, but is painted with criss-crossing strokes of moss green, azure blue, and a few touches of burgundy red. One sailboat near the trees and another farther out, to our left, are each created with a vertical stroke of white over a dark smudge to represent the boat. To our left of the trees, there are horizontal bands of pale, butter yellow, blush pink, and baby blue where the river meets the sky, about three-quarters of the way up the composition. The sky is painted with diagonal, criss-crossing strokes of pale mint green, ice blue, and shell pink.