Models (painting)

Models, also known as The Three Models and Les Poseuses, is a painting by Georges Seurat, painted between 1886 and 1888 and held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

Models
The Three Models
Artist	Georges Seurat
Year	1886
Medium	oil paint, canvas
Dimensions	200 cm (79 in) × 249.9 cm (98.4 in)
Accession No.	BF811

This painting, the third of Seurat's six major works, is a response to critics who criticized Seurat's technique for being cold and unable to represent life.[1] Thus, the artist offers a nude, the same model, in three different poses. In the left background is part of Seurat's 1884 to 1886 painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Models was exhibited at the fourth Salon des Indépendants in spring of 1888.[2]

There is a second version of this work, smaller in size, 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.[3] The painting once belonged to the merchant Heinz Berggruen and is now part of the collection of the Paul Allen estate.[4][5] 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.[6][7][8]

The English art critic Waldermar Januszczak believes this painting breaks the fourth wall, offering a glimpse into the poser who are the original source of the women depicted in A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte. He further juxtaposes this to Peter Paul Rubens' The Judgement of Paris by showing the reality behind a beautiful setting.