The Forest at Pontaubert

Seurat spent two months in the late summer and early fall of 1881 in Pontaubert a village southeast of Paris once frequented by Daubigny Corot and other Barbizon landscape painters. His visit inspired this sous-bois or forest glade which Seurat probably completed that winter in the studio he shared with his traveling companion and fellow artist Aman-Jean. With its concert of greens its subtle shimmering light effects and its vertical pattern of tree trunks this work anticipates the verdant settings of Seurat’s monumental Bathers at Asnières in London (1884) and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte in Chicago (1884–86).