Poseuse debout, de face, étude pour Les Poseuses

Seurat painted this tall, narrow panel around 1886 as a study for 'Les Poseuses', a studio scene of three nude models that he completed in 1888. In the finished painting he placed the women in front of his own huge 'Sunday on La Grande Jatte', partly to answer critics who claimed his dot-by-dot method, fine for parks and parasols, could never handle living flesh. Here he works a single figure out on its own, seen from the front, the whole body built from small separate touches of colour meant to blend in the viewer's eye rather than on the palette. The panel itself is only a strip of wood, far taller than it is wide.