Model, Back View by Georges Seurat

This is by far the finest of the three studies for The Models. The form has the density of a Greek sculpture. The light barely touches the figure and reveals it at once both sharp and soft. There is almost no contour. Color is here at its zenith. The swarm of dots produces a marvelous spangled effect.

The brush strokes exhibit great variation: broad in the treatment of the hair, they are restrained in the area of subdued light, their separateness very marked, and extremely free in the section at the right.

As for the technique, it is on this admirable small panel, this incomparable sweep of female back, that we can best study Seurat's Chromo-Luminarism. Here the swarming dots seem literally to buzz.

Chaste, human, saddened, and a bit sulky, these three models have been converted by the artist into officiating priestesses of a religion that completely divests them of erotic attraction.

The panel shown here was inherited, together with the final version of The Models, by Madeleine Knoblock, Seurat's mistress. Later it was acquired by Felix Feneon, who also owned the Model in Profile and Standing Model.