
Wikimedia Commons • Public Domain
Washington, D.C., United States
Permanently housed
Georges Seurat composed this portrait in 1879, well before developing the Pointillist technique that would make him famous. The work shows a young woman's face rendered in soft, traditional brushwork quite different from his later divided color experiments.
Seurat was only about twenty when he made this study. The Post-Impressionist innovations that would define his mature work, the tiny dots of pure color creating optical mixtures, lay several years ahead. His landmark A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte wouldn't appear until 1884-1886. This early portrait reveals an artist still learning his craft through conventional means.
The oil on canvas now belongs to Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. That institution, known primarily for Byzantine studies and historic gardens, also holds a small collection of European paintings. Seeing Seurat's traditional early work helps explain why his later Pointillist breakthrough seemed so radical. The measured, scientific approach to color came from an artist who had first mastered older methods.
Other masterpieces from the Post-Impressionism movement

Vincent van Gogh, 1890
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Vincent van Gogh, 1888
National Gallery, London

Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Getty Center, Los Angeles

Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

Vincent van Gogh, 1888
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Vincent van Gogh, 1889
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Vincent van Gogh, 1890
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Vincent van Gogh, 1888
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
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