Description
Lady with a Monkey – a hand-painted reproduction of Seurat’s painting
Lady with a Monkey is an 1884 study for the great Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte, and among our paintings on canvas it is one of the smallest and most direct. The original is held by the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton. Ours is made as a hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, dot by dot.
What is on the canvas
A woman in a long dress is seen in profile, facing right, her waist drawn in and her skirt flaring behind her in the bell silhouette that was fashionable in 1884. On the grass in front of her stands a small monkey on a lead, put down in a few dark touches. There is no built background — only grass, in greens, yellows and blues set side by side. The figure is not finished in detail; her face is barely a profile, because it did not need to be.
A study that became the most argued-over detail in the finished painting
This figure would end up in the lower right corner of La Grande Jatte, beside the man in the top hat, and the monkey is the detail that caused more argument about that picture than any other. Here you see it still being decided: Seurat is working out the proportion between the woman and the animal. The two are worth looking at together — the study explains the choice, the large canvas shows it settled.
A note on the original
The original is oil on wood, not on canvas: for studies painted outdoors Seurat used small panels that fitted inside the lid of his paintbox. The museum measures it 24.8 cm high and 15.9 cm wide; we state width first and then height, so with us it is written 15.9 x 24.8 cm, and the table spells the order out in words as well. The details are read from the Smith College Museum of Art’s own record: dated 1884, oil on wood.
What you receive
The painting is made by our painter by hand, oil on canvas, in the size you choose, and to your own measurements if you prefer. The subject is upright with a single figure against a light ground, so it holds up at a modest size: in a hallway, above a desk, or paired with a second study. Because the ground is pale grass, it separates best against a wall of full colour. When the canvas is finished we photograph it and send you the picture for approval before it leaves the studio. You choose the frame in our 3D application. Every artwork we sell is hand-painted and never printed.
| Year of creation: | 1884 |
| Original size (width × height): | 15.9 x 24.8 cm |
| Painting style: | Pointillism |
| Original technique: | Oil on wood |
| Located: | Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton |
This shelf also carries the painting this study was made for — the Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte — and Les Poseuses, the large canvas painted immediately after it, in which La Grande Jatte itself hangs on the studio wall.
