The Seine at La Grande Jatte in the Spring by Georges Seurat

Several years before he painted this canvas, Georges Seurat sketched out a first idea for it: The Canoe. But, whereas the latter conveys the impression of gliding flight-a fleeting evocation of the passing of time - the Brussels painting is a vision of stability. The figure in the canoe, the boat with the white sail - these fleeting elements are here overshadowed by the static elements of the composition: its horizontality, the wide bright strip of the far quay over the water, the tree with the bifurcated trunk, the grass in the slanting foreground area.

Charles Angrand once owned The Canoe; he himself had also painted this motif, with Seurat, at this very spot. In a letter to Lucie Cousturier (July 4, 1912) Angrand recalls how he and Seurat "worked side by side on La Grande Jatte through one whole spring." He mentions the "tree in sunshine" of which he had a sketch.

The painting shown here breathes the same joy in living with which Seurat always endowed the banks of the Seine. It has the crystalline clarity of a fine spring day.