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Models, also known as The Three Models and Les Poseuses, is a famous work by Georges Seurat, painted between 1886 and 1888 and held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Models was exhibited at the fourth Salon des Indépendants in spring of 1888.

The piece, the third of Seurat's six major works, is a response to critics who deemed Seurat's technique as inferior for being cold and unable to represent life. As a response, the artist offers a nude, portraiture of the same model, in three different poses. In the left background is part of Seurat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

The painting is regarded by many as unique because of it’s technique of pointillism and color theory, and the composition of the models in regards to body politics and nude female paintings.

Seurat's Life
Georges Pierre-Seurat was the third child of Ernestine Fevre and Antoine Seurat. He was born in Paris, December 2nd 1859, into a bourgeois family. He entered in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1878. He then studied under Henri Lehman. Seurat is a well known painter whose works were revolutionary because of their use of pointillism as a technique for realism. He, along with other remarkable artists such as Paul Signac, Albert Dubois-Pilllet, and Odilon Redon were responsible for the Salon des Independents. The Salon des Independents was an yearly exhibition in Paris that rejected the official “Salon” (established by Louis XIV) rigorous standards for inclusion.

Seurat is credited with painting the famous work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884. Which was displayed in the 1886 Salon and appears in the background of Les Poseuses. The painting is known to be the start of Neo-Impressionist movement. Seurat is also praised for his technique of pointillism which in an almost scientific manner breaks the paint surface into dots of color that blend together when seen from afar.

Seurat died at the age of 32, leaving his last work unfinished. Seurat is well known for having works of art that are well planned and hinge on the norms of physical nature, colors, and “geometric harmony of shape”.

Pointillism and Color Theory
Pointillism is a painting technique made famous though Paul Seurat. Pointillism refers to painting through a series of colored dots that together make up the pattern of an image.

In an article written by Norma Broude in the Art Bulletin, she compares pointillism to photo printing in the 1880s France. Though not the same, there are large similarities in the results given the preoccupation with color theory and the meticulously planning of paint application in pointillism. In his works, Seurat studied the colors and de-composed them in order to separate the primary hues that made up color  and light in the painting. He then recombined the colors, juxtaposing them as to create the perfect tone. He does that in order to replicate luminosity and dual tones also found in nature. This shows the characteristics of neo-impressionism which include but are not limited to faith in color science, use of bright colors, and mechanical brush strokes.

Les Poseuses
Seurat painted two versions of Les Poseuses, one smaller in size, is more in accord with the divisionism technique that Seurat had invented, and favoured by Seurat specialists. This version is on the cover of the catalogue for the 1991 Seurat exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though the painting once belonged to the merchant Heinz Berggruen, it is now part of the collection of the Paul Allen estate. In 1947, at the sale of the collection of Félix Fénéon, an early advocate and promoter of Seurat, France acquired studies for the painting that now reside in the Musée d'Orsay.

Painted between 1886 and 1888, Les Poseuses was Seurat’s response to criticism to his painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Critics of the time claimed that the painting did not convey subjects that were real enough for it to be considered realism. The Models, then is a direct response to this as it features the subject of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte outside of the painting in a vulnerable moment. This type of reflection also comments on the production itself, as the models are seen in the studio, in front of the painting, with artifacts scattered around them.

Les Poseuses in french roughly translate to 'the posers', not necessarily models, which becomes "modeles". even in the title of the painting there is a underlying debate at hand in which the quality of the female subject as an object rather than fully human is being disputed. The title, though indicates the quality of object to be looked at and manipulated, the painting itself presents something quite different. In the canvas what we see is that models depicted are in a sense off duty, caught off guard, or not necessarily posing at all. Seurat painted subjects in a realistic depiction rather than with idealized beauty (such as seen in Manet's Olympia). He further insinuates the realness of such women by painting people who are in fact working. These are not simply models because they are muses, but instead they are women who are earning money. Thus, breaking the stereotype of objects and complicating the reality of the subject painted.

Furthermore, the English art critic Waldermar Januszczak believes this painting breaks the fourth wall, offering a glimpse into the poser who is the original source of the women depicted in A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte.