Woman with a Monkey

Seurat was 24 in 1884 and building the biggest thing he would ever make, the great scene of Parisians relaxing on the island of the Grande Jatte in the Seine. He got there through dozens of small studies like this one, painted quickly on little wood panels. This is where he worked out the fashionable woman at the far right of the finished picture and the monkey she leads on a leash. The animal stayed in, an odd private note in an otherwise proper Sunday crowd. You can already see him breaking the light into separate touches of colour, the method he would push much further on the big canvas.