Model in Profile by Georges Seurat

Each of the three figures in the large painting The Models was the subject of a preliminary study by Seurat. In these three panels now in The Louvre, where they are brought together within one frame ( they were formerly owned 'by Madeleine Knoblock, Seurat's mistress, and then by Felix Feneon), the painter's technique is perhaps most apparent. They are a good illustration of his Chromo-Luminarism, his way of setting. his dots like a swarm of tiny bees around the form they generate and define. We can see how they are smaller or bigger according to where they occur, and how the form emerges out of these tremulous molecules. They are very much alive and respond to every vibration of light and sensibility. It is a technique that makes it possible for the painter to render softness without loss of precision, a sense of the dynamically alive without dissolving form.

The atmosphere is limpid-there is not a single line. Volumes are modulated with elegance and delicacy. The darkest area ( the baseboard at the bottom of the wall) is close to the lightest ( the cloth on which the woman is sitting). In this buzzing swarm of warm tones the model has the gracefulness of a classical statuette.

In the study shown here, the model is holding her ankle, whereas in the small copy of the final version in the Mcllhenny collection in Philadelphia, as in the big painting in the Barnes Foundation, she is shown removing a green stocking.

The painted border was added by Seurat in 1890, as indicated by a penciled notation Feneio made on the back of the picture.