Description
Model Facing Front (Study for Les Poseuses) II – a hand-painted reproduction of Seurat’s painting
This is the second of Seurat’s studies for the central figure of Les Poseuses, painted in 1887, and among our paintings on canvas it is the one that shows a painter changing his mind. The original is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Ours is made as a hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, dot by dot.
What is on the canvas
The same standing nude, seen from the front, but drawn tighter than in the first study: the shoulders are squarer, the weight more evenly carried, the outline firmer against the ground. The colour has cooled — more blue and violet in the shadow side, less of the warm ochre that ran through the earlier panel. The background is again bare, a field of small strokes rather than a room. The figure sits slightly higher in the frame, which is the change that carried through to the finished canvas.
Two studies of one pose, and why both survive
Painters usually discard the first attempt. Seurat kept both, and both entered the Orsay collection, which is why this shelf can carry them side by side. Put next to each other they show the decision being made rather than described: the same woman, the same light, one year apart, and a shift of a few centimetres in where she stands. That is as close as a viewer normally gets to watching a method work.
A note on the original
The original is oil on a small wood panel. The museum measures it 25 cm high and 15.8 cm wide; we state width first and then height, so with us it is written 15.8 x 25 cm, and the table spells the order out in words as well. The details are read from the Musée d’Orsay’s own record: dated 1887, oil on panel. This is a different panel from the 1886 study of the same pose, not a second print of it — the two are separate works and both are on this shelf.
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 and spare, and it is at its best hung as a pair with the 1886 study — the two read as one idea in two states. Singly it suits a narrow wall or an alcove. 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: | 1887 |
| Original size (width × height): | 15.8 x 25 cm |
| Painting style: | Pointillism |
| Original technique: | Oil on wood |
| Located: | Musée d’Orsay, Paris |
This shelf carries the first study of the same pose, painted in 1886, and the large canvas both were made for — Les Poseuses, where this figure finally stands at the centre.
