Young Woman Powdering Herself (Study)

This study on panel for the celebrated 'Young Woman Powdering Herself' (1889–90, Courtauld Gallery) provides direct access to Seurat's working process for one of his most unusual and personal paintings. The subject was his companion Madeleine Knobloch, the only interior figure composition among his large-scale works and the only direct representation of his private domestic life. The larger finished canvas is famous for a small mirror in which a self-portrait was detected—later replaced with a flower—and this preparatory panel records an earlier stage in the composition's development, likely before that revision.

The panel study retains the exploratory quality of a work in progress, with the dot application less uniformly systematic than the final canvas. The figure and interior furnishings are established in their essential relationships of colour and form, allowing Seurat to assess the composition before final execution.