Free entry to `Seurat and The Bathers'

Readers' Offer

To celebrate National Gallery Week (jointly sponsored by The Independent and the National Grid) the National Gallery is, for today only, offering readers exclusive free admission (usual cost pounds 6 a ticket) to its current major exhibition, Seurat and The Bathers (sponsored by Pearson plc).

One of the truly great paintings of the 19th-century, Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres (above) was completed when the artist was only 25. The current National Gallery exhibition is the first time it has been shown alongside examples of Seurat's earlier work and of his preparatory sketches both for the finished canvas (such as the conte crayon drawing of a "Seated Nude Boy", below) and for its pointillist companion-piece, La Grande Jatte (bottom).

The show also includes some 30 other related works by such predecessors and contemporaries as Poussin, Ingres, Van Gogh and Signac.

To claim your free admission: simply present a copy of today's Independent in person at the ticket desk on the ground floor of the Sainsbury Wing. To avoid overcrowding, a timed ticket entry system is in operation, with the day divided into half-hourly admission slots. Readers will be offered the next available slot, but may stay as long as they wish. Note that, on Wednesdays, the gallery is open from 10am to 8pm.

Personal booking only applies.