Modelo sentada, de perfil

This small panel, barely 25 centimeters tall, is one of three studies Seurat made in 1887 of a single model, seen here from the side as she bends to touch her ankle. He was working toward a larger canvas called Les Poseuses, now in Philadelphia, in which the same figure appears three times as she undresses in the corner of his studio. Part of the point was an answer to his critics. The tiny dots of pure color that people found cold and mechanical could also describe warm skin and an easy human pose. Georges Seurat died in 1891 at just 31, and these little wooden boards passed through the collection of the critic Felix Feneon before France bought them in 1947.