Young Woman Powdering Herself (Seurat)
Georges Seurat · 1889
The story
Young Woman Powdering Herself (French: Jeune femme se poudrant) is an oil on canvas painting executed between 1889 and 1890 by the French painter Georges Seurat. Considered a leading example of pointillism, it is Seurat’s only single-subject portrait and depicts his mistress, Madeleine Knobloch, sitting at her dressing table.
The painting has been the subject of various scholarly interpretations, including scholarship that emphasizes themes of artifice and human vanity. Decades after it was first displayed at the Sixth Salon des Indépendants in March 1890, modern scientific imagining revealed a hidden self-portrait of Seurat under the top layers of paint. As a result,Young Woman Powdering Herself is the only known self-portrait of Seurat.
Although the work received little critical attention at the time of its debut, it later garnered both praise and criticism from art critics. The painting has been owned by several notable art collectors before Samuel Courtauld bought it in 1926. Courtauld later donated it to the Courtauld Institute of Art, where it remains on display today in the Gallery at Somerset House.
- Artist
- Georges Seurat
- Date
- 1889
- Collection
- Courtauld Gallery, London, United Kingdom
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Size
- 95.5 × 79.5 cm
Story adapted from the Wikipedia article and its contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
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