Young Woman Powdering Herself by Georges Seurat

This is a portrait of Madeleine Knoblock, Seurat's mistress. There is an atypical squalidness about this canvas, which could almost be a scene in a gypsy wagon. Instead of the vase with flowers seen between the two panels of the folding mirror on the wall, Seurat had first painted his own portrait. When a friend who saw it told him it made him look silly, Seurat covered his face with the flower pot.

As for the plump model, she brings to mind the circus and carnival people and the music-hall artistes Seurat was seeing so much of at the time ( he often went to the Gahe Rochechouart and the Eden Concert). Perhaps Seurat wanted to show us his lady friend in her habitual surroundingscorseted like a traveling player, dressed in organdy, with heavy bracelets and a pink hair ribbon of the kind we see attached to the round mirror on that horrible little table.

The painting belonged to Madeleine Knoblock. It is interesting to compare it with the drawing The Artist's Dressing Room of about 1887, in which we find this same atmosphere of backstage at a carnival or circus.