Although the group of artists that we now know as the ‘Impressionists’ did not refer to themselves as such until 1877, on the occasion of their third collective exhibition, the movement, spearheaded by Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and others, had been at the centre of new artistic thinking since before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Their controversial approach had challenged the art establishment for the best part of two decades by the time of their last group exhibition in 1886. Their paintings had achieved limited acceptance among some critics and collectors and ridicule had slowly given way to a grudging respect and partial understanding, although commercial success remained a fugitive goal for others.
Un dimanche après-midi sur l’île de la Grande Jatte, 1884–86, Georges Seurat (Art Institute of Chicago/ www.artic.edu)
The work of such a dynamic group of talented individuals obviously encompasses a huge variety of subject matter, painting technique and intellectual motivation but, perhaps, the phrase ‘Romantic Impressionism’ or ‘Natural Impressionism’ could be used as a unifying concept that gave the group a degree of cohesion. Their intuitive approach to the study of light and colour resulted in the use of random, layered and variable brush strokes to capture fleeting, atmospheric moments from the world around them.
As the pace of change in all things accelerated towards the end of the nineteenth century, so it was for the art world. Included in the eighth and final Impressionist show was the monumental work by Georges Seurat called Un dimanche après-midi sur l’île de la Grande Jatte and this painting stands as a signpost to one of the next great developments in artistic endeavour. Seurat had become fascinated by the pioneering work of scientists such as Ogden Rood, Michel-Eugène Chevreul, Charles Henry, Charles Blanc and James Maxwell, into optics and chromatic theory. This led him to experiment with the technique of placing discrete touches or points (hence pointilism) of different colours adjacent to one another and allowing visual receptors in the eye of the viewer to mix them, rather than mixing them on the palette. The method could be ‘painstaking’ and mechanical but the results were often dazzling displays of glowing luminosiity.
Camille Pissarro, sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Impressionism’ was intrigued by Seurat’s work and adopted the style himself. Indeed it was his championing of the new technique that persuaded his fellow-impressionists to allow work by Seurat and Paul Signac, a fellow-devotee, to be included in the show. By now the cohesion of the impressionists had weakened and the time seemed right for new talent with fresh ideas to make their mark. The epithet Impressionism had originally been coined by the critic Louis Leroy as a satirical comment on the paintings of Monet and his contemporaries and it was another critic, Félix Fénéon, who first used the term ‘Neo-Impressionism’ to describe the work of Seurat and his followers. However, there was no hint of satire in his remark as he was already an enthusiast for the style. Pissarro had used the phrase ‘scientific impressionism’ and Seurat preferred ‘chromo-luminarism’ but it was Fénéon’s phrase that persisted. Signac’s portrait of the critic – Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon, 1890, (Museum of Modern Art, New York/www.moma.org) – exemplifies the style.
ART, BOHEMIANISM AND ANARCHY
Artists have never been strangers to an unconventional lifestyle and those living and working in nineteenth century Paris often found themselves sharing a ‘gypsy’ existence on the margins of mainstream society. Gradually ‘Bohemianism’ developed into an idea not necessarily linked to poverty and was adopted by the company of artists, writers and musicians who shared unorthodox and anti-establishment attitudes. It was not unknown for individuals of wealth and privilege to regard themselves as bohemians – a far cry from the original Romany vagabonds who reached western Europe via Bohemia.
Although the Paris Commune, which attempted to create a new kind of government from the catastrophic shambles of the Franco-Prussian War, was a brief and bloody affair, many of the intellectual élite remained committed to a radical political agenda in the years that followed. ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ had been officially adopted as the motto of the Third Republic but for many free-thinkers in the boulevard cafés and bars this was seen merely as lip-service by a conservative government to true socialist ideals.
Sympathy with socialist ideas was shared by many in the artistic community and in the years between 1886 and Seurat’s untimely death in 1891, Neo-Impressionism developed as a movement complete with a theory-based manifesto which subscribed to radical notions relating to social organisation, scientific progress, opposition to establishment values and aesthetic purity. As we have seen, there was also an established ‘tradition’ of individualism amongst writers and artists that fostered social and sexual freedom. Baudelaire’s radical ideas had influenced the original group of Impressionists and the succeeding generation of literary figures including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé and Émile Verhaeren would enjoy close relationships with many of the leading painters of the day. The picture shown is Stéphane Mallarmé, 1876 by Edouard Manet (Musée d’Orsay, Paris/www.musee-orsay.fr).
To some extent painting had always been a vehicle for state-sponsored propaganda and in France this was exemplified in the way that the Academie and Official Salon held sway over the art world. Literature had a long tradition of challenge to the establishment and the second half of the nineteenth century was a time when artists, writers and philosophers made common cause to expound their theories about society and politics. Painting was still a powerful vehicle for communicating these ideas in a world still lacking universal literacy and before the advent of other forms of communication such as mass circulation publications, cinema, broadcasting and, more recently, the internet and all the possibilities for disseminating information that presents.
SEURAT AND HIS DISCIPLES
It was the agile-minded Pissarro who first saw the possibility of furthering his own artistic endeavour by adopting Seurat’s ideas and he influenced his son, Lucien, to follow the same path. Pissarro’s painting shown is La Récolte des Foins, Eragny, 1887 (Private collection). However, it was Paul Signac who became the most devoted disciple and after Seurat’s death it was he who became the driving force in the movement. It was these four artists who represented the new style at the final Impressionist exhibition but they were quickly joined by others, including Albert Dubois-Pillet, Maximilien Luce, Théo Van Ryselberghe, Charles Angrand and Henri Edmond Cross. There were many others who experimented with the techniques and theories of the movement and who exhibited at various times with the established circle of painters. For many this experimentation was an important stage in their development of other ideas such as Fauvism and Cubism. Matisse was an enthusiastic exponent for a short time but his evolution as an artist took him on a different path. Pissarro, who had been such a champion of the cause in the early years, soon tired of the technique and returned to more ‘traditional’ impressionism.
Seurat was only 31 years old when he contracted a mystery illness and died suddenly. Albert Dubois-Pillet had died the year before and Charles Angrand had more-or-less retired to Normandy. The image shown is Path in the Country, c.1886 by Angrand (Indianapolis Museum of Art/www.imamuseum.org). With Camille Pissarro’s disaffection and his son, Lucien’s move to London, the ‘Neos’ were in crisis and it was at this point that Paul Signac took up the reins and became almost evangelical in the promotion of the cause. His book, D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme was widely read by artists thoroughout Europe and remained influential into the early years of the twentieth century. Belgium proved to be particularly fertile ground for the new movement and was enthusiastically adopted by the Salon des XX. Brussels was to host many important exhibitions of the ‘Neos’ work and it was here that key figures in art and literature met and exchanged ideas. Inevitably Neo-Impressionism was eclipsed by a succession of other ‘isms’ but it still occupies an important place in the history of modern art.
A MOVE AWAY FROM PARIS
It so happened that Henri Edmond Cross suffered from chronic rheumatism and had been advised by his doctors to abandon the sometimes damp and cold of Paris in favour of the warmer and more benign climate of the south. Cross had already made several visits to the Côte d’Azure which had inspired a series of paintings and in October 1891 he and his future wife moved to a rented villa only a few yards from the beach at Cabasson, a hamlet to the west of Le Lavandou in the Var region. His new surroundings which he described as ‘Hills of pines and cork oaks sloping gently down to the sea, to meet in passing a beach of sand of a fineness unknown on the Channel coast’, inspired him to paint pictures of simplicity and purity that, perhaps, could not have been painted anywhere else. In 1892 he bought a plot of land in Saint-Clair, a seaside village just to the east of Le Lavandou, where he had a house built and where he lived, worked and entertained for the rest of his life. The portrait of Cross, painted in 1898, is by Maximilien Luce (Musée d’Orsay, Paris/www.musee-orsay.fr).
Cross was in regular correspondence with Paul Signac and it wasn’t long before his enthusiastic descriptions tempted him to visit nearby Saint-Tropèz in his yacht L’Olympia. Signac’s passion for sailing had already made him familiar with various anchorages along the coast and he had painted at Cassis in 1889. The magic atmosphere cast its spell again and to quote his own words, ‘In the distance, the blue silhouettes of the Maures and the Estérel – I have enough here to keep me busy all my life – I have just discovered happiness’. Signac settled in Saint-Tropèz and he and Cross were often to be found painting the landscape side-by-side. After the death of his friend, Signac moved to Antibes a little further along the coast towards Nice. The picture shown is Paul Signac at the Helm of Olympia, 1896 by Theo Van Rysselberghe (Private collection).
Théo Van Rysselberghe, originally from Ghent in Belgium, was a guest aboard Signac’s yacht in 1892 but he, again, was no stranger to the delights of the Mediterranean. He became firm friends with Cross and spent a great deal of time in his company, exploring the Côte d’Azure and finding inspiration for many paintings. He was devastated by his friend’s death in 1910 and shortly after that he moved to Saint Clair where he lived for the rest of his life. Shown is Self-portrait in a green waistcoat, 1924 (Private collection).
Maximilien Luce was another member of the ‘Neo’ circle and he joined Signac and Cross at Saint-Tropèz and Cabasson in 1892. He was a frequent visitor to the Cross household and painted the portrait of Henri Edmond in his studio. The quartet of Signac, Cross, Van Rysselberghe and Luce were the principal figures in the movement and exhibited together on many occasions. In common with other Neo-impressionists, Luce held quite radical views and he was imprisoned for a short time in 1894 following the assassination of President Carnot and he was detained again two years later when the king of Spain made a visit to Paris. The spirit of this pugnacious rebel is captured in Signac’s portrait of 1980 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts/www.artsmia.org).
ARCADIA RE-IMAGINED
There is something timeless about the concept of a land populated by unsophisticated folk leading a happy life in bucolic harmony. Arcadia was, indeed, a region in ancient Greece where fertile valleys were surrounded by high mountains and the population of primitive herdsmen lived in relative isolation. Their local god was Pan, he of the pipes, and the area became associated in the classical world with pastoral music and poetry. A whole genre of literature typified by the work of Theocritus and later Virgil celebrated the lives and loves of shepherds and shepherdesses and their relationships with the pantheon of gods, goddesses, nymphs and dryads in an idealised landscape. This tradition of Pastoral Poetry continued in later centuries throughout Europe, particularly at the time of the Renaissance and was much appreciated by the intellectual and cultural elites.
As with literature, so it was with painting and sculpture. The idea of ‘arcadia’ provided artists with a wonderful backdrop for works that could escape the confines of religious orthodoxy and the lives of the saints. The depiction of events from the classical past carried a cloak of respectability even if that garment was of an extremely flimsy and diaphanous nature in most cases. It would, indeed, be another labour of Hercules to count the number of paintings illustrating the goings-on of scantily clad gods and goddesses that graced the private apartments of princes and priests across Christendom. Among French painters, Poussin, Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard all excelled at the genre and the palaces of pre-revolutionary France were awash with their playful canvases and murals in the rococco style. The picture shown is The Toilet of Venus, 1751 by Boucher (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/www.metmuseum.org). When Marie Antoinette and her coterie tired of these two-dimensional re-creations they would dress themselves as shepherdesses and escape to the fantasy hamlet created in the grounds of Versailles. In the same way that a wealthy dilatante could see themselves as a ‘bohemian’ so an aristocrat could imagine themselves living the life of an unsophisticated peasant.
Although the guillotine-sharp edge of the Revolution swept away the flourish and froth of the rococco style, the attractions of the classical world remained and came to underpin the philosophy of the new republic. Later, Napoleon with his imperial ambitions adopted ideas from the ancient Greeks and Romans and Neo-classicism became the prevalent intellectual movement. This was reflected in the state-sponsored art and architecture of the First Empire where anything referring back to the classical world was in vogue yet again. This can be seen in the paintings of Jacques-Louis David, who had been a pupil of Boucher, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The image shown is Cupid and Psyche, 1817 by David (The Cleveland Museum of Art/www.clevelandart.org).
As has already been mentioned, artists in the second half of the nineteenth century were much influenced by contemporary writers, such as Baudelaire, who encouraged them to adopt a style and subjects that more honestly represented the real world in which they lived and convey that world ‘warts and all’. And so you are far more likely to see workers toiling in the fields and factory chimneys in the landscapes of Pissarro and Monet rather than the ruins of classical temples and decorous peasants. However this does not mean that the vision of Arcadia had completely disappeared from the scene. Most of the Impressionists would have had some degree of classical training and most were familiar with copying works in the Louvre which was crammed with artifacts and sculpture from Egypt, Greece and Rome including the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Illustrated is Bathing Goose Maidens by Camille Pissarro (Private collection).
Although Pissarro’s depictions of shepherdesses are much more rooted in the rural reality of the day he was still tempted to depict bathing goose maidens in a rather more bucolic manner that harks back to an earlier age with any hint of social realism slipping away as easily as the encumbering clothing. It wasn’t only Pissarro who found the subject of naked bathers by the water’s edge irresistable as is evidenced by Renoir’s A Nymph by a Stream and as shown here The Large Bathers (Philadelphia Museum of Art/www.philamuseum.org) or Cézanne’s whole series depicting the same motif over many years. Manet painted The Surprised Nymph and, of course, his Dejeurner sur l’herbe showing naked female bathers in the company of their male companions. This painting might not have been so controversial had the men’s modern dress not intruded upon the otherwise ‘arcadian’ scene but the allusions to contemporary morés and the darker side of French society caused a scandal.
And so we come to the ‘Neos’ and their quest for a ‘New Arcadia’ in which the anarchic vision of social equality was at the heart of the ethos underpinning their work. Life in the South of France, remote from the relentless pace of change of the capital, proceeded at a much slower pace and the fundamentals of an agrarian lifestyle had remained virtually unchanged for centuries. Perhaps this led Signac, Cross, Van Rysselberghe and others to hold a utopian view of the world in which the sons and daughters of soil and sea became characters in a world of blissful equality working in the sun-kissed fields of fertile plenty. As is so often the case, before and since, the world imagined did not correspond with the, often, brutal poverty and unrelenting hardship of the real world in which the peasants beyond the artist’s gate actually lived. The image shown is Bords méditerranées, 1895, by Henri-Edmond Cross (Collection of Lenora and W.F. Brown).
These idealistic notions are perhaps best epitomised by Signac’s monumental work entitled In the Time of Harmony painted between 1893 and 1895 (Marie de Montreuil, Paris). This huge canvas is set in the environs of Saint-Tropèz and is undoubtedly an attempt to make the Neo’s anarchic ethos manifest in paint. The sub-title of the picture is ‘The golden age is not passed; it is still to come’ is a quote from La Revue anarchiste by Malato. The picture obviously makes reference to Seurat’s La Grande Jatte, both in size and content but now the denizens of Paris taking their ease on a Sunday afternoon by the river have been transposed to the shores of the Mediterranean where virtuous workers take a break from toil to enjoy their leisure in sunshine and harmony.
Signac had also been influenced by the work of Puvis de Chavannes, particularly his murals at the Sorbonne, and it was his hope that works of this nature would be used to decorate government buildings, emphasising the virtues of honest labour and equality that would build a new society. Indeed, there was a plan to house the painting in the Maison du Peuple in Brussels, the brainchild of Victor Horta but this did not materialise. After the artist’s death in 1935 it was finally installed in the newly built town hall of Montreuil, a communist suburb of Paris and in the words of Maximilien Luce, the placement of the picture ‘corresponds exactly to what Signac had wanted: a public place in the presence of the people.’
SELECTED PAINTINGS AND WHERE THEY MAY BE SEEN
If works mentioned in the text do not appear in the list they are in private collections.
Charles Angrand Path in the Country, c.1886 (Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana)
François Boucher The Toilet of Venus, 1751 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Henri-Edmond Cross Bords méditerranées, 1895 (Collection of Lenora and W.F. Brown)
Jacques-Louis David Cupid and Psyche, 1817 (The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio)
Maximilien Luce Henri Edmond Cross, 1898 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) Edouard Manet Stéphane Mallarmé, 1876 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir The Large Bathers, 1884–87 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania)
Georges Seurat Un dimanche après-midi sur l’île de la Grande Jatte, 1884–86 (Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois)
Paul Signac Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon, 1890 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) Maximilien Luce, 1890 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota) In the Time of Harmony, 1893–95 (Marie de Montreuil, Paris)
Un dimanche après-midi sur l’île de la Grande Jatte, 1884–86, Georges Seurat 
Camille Pissarro, sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Impressionism’ was intrigued by Seurat’s work and adopted the style himself. Indeed it was his championing of the new technique that persuaded his fellow-impressionists to allow work by Seurat and Paul Signac, a fellow-devotee, to be included in the show. By now the cohesion of the impressionists had weakened and the time seemed right for new talent with fresh ideas to make their mark. The epithet Impressionism had originally been coined by the critic Louis Leroy as a satirical comment on the paintings of Monet and his contemporaries and it was another critic, Félix Fénéon, who first used the term ‘Neo-Impressionism’ to describe the work of Seurat and his followers. However, there was no hint of satire in his remark as he was already an enthusiast for the style. Pissarro had used the phrase ‘scientific impressionism’ and Seurat preferred ‘chromo-luminarism’ but it was Fénéon’s phrase that persisted. Signac’s portrait of the critic – Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon, 1890, (Museum of Modern Art, New York/
Sympathy with socialist ideas was shared by many in the artistic community and in the years between 1886 and Seurat’s untimely death in 1891, Neo-Impressionism developed as a movement complete with a theory-based manifesto which subscribed to radical notions relating to social organisation, scientific progress, opposition to establishment values and aesthetic purity. As we have seen, there was also an established ‘tradition’ of individualism amongst writers and artists that fostered social and sexual freedom. Baudelaire’s radical ideas had influenced the original group of Impressionists and the succeeding generation of literary figures including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé and Émile Verhaeren would enjoy close relationships with many of the leading painters of the day. The picture shown is Stéphane Mallarmé, 1876 by Edouard Manet (Musée d’Orsay, Paris/
Seurat was only 31 years old when he contracted a mystery illness and died suddenly. Albert Dubois-Pillet had died the year before and Charles Angrand had more-or-less retired to Normandy. The image shown is Path in the Country, c.1886 by Angrand (Indianapolis Museum of Art/
A MOVE AWAY FROM PARIS
Cross was in regular correspondence with Paul Signac and it wasn’t long before his enthusiastic descriptions tempted him to visit nearby Saint-Tropèz in his yacht L’Olympia. Signac’s passion for sailing had already made him familiar with various anchorages along the coast and he had painted at Cassis in 1889. The magic atmosphere cast its spell again and to quote his own words, ‘In the distance, the blue silhouettes of the Maures and the Estérel – I have enough here to keep me busy all my life – I have just discovered happiness’. Signac settled in Saint-Tropèz and he and Cross were often to be found painting the landscape side-by-side. After the death of his friend, Signac moved to Antibes a little further along the coast towards Nice. The picture shown is Paul Signac at the Helm of Olympia, 1896 by Theo Van Rysselberghe (Private collection).
Théo Van Rysselberghe, originally from Ghent in Belgium, was a guest aboard Signac’s yacht in 1892 but he, again, was no stranger to the delights of the Mediterranean. He became firm friends with Cross and spent a great deal of time in his company, exploring the Côte d’Azure and finding inspiration for many paintings. He was devastated by his friend’s death in 1910 and shortly after that he moved to Saint Clair where he lived for the rest of his life. Shown is Self-portrait in a green waistcoat, 1924 (Private collection).
Maximilien Luce was another member of the ‘Neo’ circle and he joined Signac and Cross at Saint-Tropèz and Cabasson in 1892. He was a frequent visitor to the Cross household and painted the portrait of Henri Edmond in his studio. The quartet of Signac, Cross, Van Rysselberghe and Luce were the principal figures in the movement and exhibited together on many occasions. In common with other Neo-impressionists, Luce held quite radical views and he was imprisoned for a short time in 1894 following the assassination of President Carnot and he was detained again two years later when the king of Spain made a visit to Paris. The spirit of this pugnacious rebel is captured in Signac’s portrait of 1980 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts/
As with literature, so it was with painting and sculpture. The idea of ‘arcadia’ provided artists with a wonderful backdrop for works that could escape the confines of religious orthodoxy and the lives of the saints. The depiction of events from the classical past carried a cloak of respectability even if that garment was of an extremely flimsy and diaphanous nature in most cases. It would, indeed, be another labour of Hercules to count the number of paintings illustrating the goings-on of scantily clad gods and goddesses that graced the private apartments of princes and priests across Christendom. Among French painters, Poussin, Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard all excelled at the genre and the palaces of pre-revolutionary France were awash with their playful canvases and murals in the rococco style. The picture shown is The Toilet of Venus, 1751 by Boucher (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/
Although the guillotine-sharp edge of the Revolution swept away the flourish and froth of the rococco style, the attractions of the classical world remained and came to underpin the philosophy of the new republic. Later, Napoleon with his imperial ambitions adopted ideas from the ancient Greeks and Romans and Neo-classicism became the prevalent intellectual movement. This was reflected in the state-sponsored art and architecture of the First Empire where anything referring back to the classical world was in vogue yet again. This can be seen in the paintings of Jacques-Louis David, who had been a pupil of Boucher, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The image shown is Cupid and Psyche, 1817 by David (The Cleveland Museum of Art/
As has already been mentioned, artists in the second half of the nineteenth century were much influenced by contemporary writers, such as Baudelaire, who encouraged them to adopt a style and subjects that more honestly represented the real world in which they lived and convey that world ‘warts and all’. And so you are far more likely to see workers toiling in the fields and factory chimneys in the landscapes of Pissarro and Monet rather than the ruins of classical temples and decorous peasants. However this does not mean that the vision of Arcadia had completely disappeared from the scene. Most of the Impressionists would have had some degree of classical training and most were familiar with copying works in the Louvre which was crammed with artifacts and sculpture from Egypt, Greece and Rome including the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Illustrated is Bathing Goose Maidens by Camille Pissarro (Private collection).
Although Pissarro’s depictions of shepherdesses are much more rooted in the rural reality of the day he was still tempted to depict bathing goose maidens in a rather more bucolic manner that harks back to an earlier age with any hint of social realism slipping away as easily as the encumbering clothing. It wasn’t only Pissarro who found the subject of naked bathers by the water’s edge irresistable as is evidenced by Renoir’s A Nymph by a Stream and as shown here The Large Bathers (Philadelphia Museum of Art/
And so we come to the ‘Neos’ and their quest for a ‘New Arcadia’ in which the anarchic vision of social equality was at the heart of the ethos underpinning their work. Life in the South of France, remote from the relentless pace of change of the capital, proceeded at a much slower pace and the fundamentals of an agrarian lifestyle had remained virtually unchanged for centuries. Perhaps this led Signac, Cross, Van Rysselberghe and others to hold a utopian view of the world in which the sons and daughters of soil and sea became characters in a world of blissful equality working in the sun-kissed fields of fertile plenty. As is so often the case, before and since, the world imagined did not correspond with the, often, brutal poverty and unrelenting hardship of the real world in which the peasants beyond the artist’s gate actually lived. The image shown is Bords méditerranées, 1895, by Henri-Edmond Cross (Collection of Lenora and W.F. Brown).
These idealistic notions are perhaps best epitomised by Signac’s monumental work entitled In the Time of Harmony painted between 1893 and 1895 (Marie de Montreuil, Paris). This huge canvas is set in the environs of Saint-Tropèz and is undoubtedly an attempt to make the Neo’s anarchic ethos manifest in paint. The sub-title of the picture is ‘The golden age is not passed; it is still to come’ is a quote from La Revue anarchiste by Malato. The picture obviously makes reference to Seurat’s La Grande Jatte, both in size and content but now the denizens of Paris taking their ease on a Sunday afternoon by the river have been transposed to the shores of the Mediterranean where virtuous workers take a break from toil to enjoy their leisure in sunshine and harmony. 
