The Small Painting That Set Seurat's Auction Record

Georges Seurat's Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) (1888) sold for $149.2m at Christie's New York on November 9, 2022. The oil on canvas work, which had a guarantee, had been traded 12 times in the past. It was consigned by the estate of Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder.

The painting has been displayed in major art museums on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and London's National Gallery. It was also briefly shown in the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Allen's tribute to Jimi Hendrix.

Set inside the artist's Paris studio, Seurat depicted three young models posing in front of his great painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, which had caused a sensation when unveiled at the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in 1886. His masterpiece now hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago.

A large-scale version of Les Poseuses, Ensemble hangs in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) is a rare work associated with that canvas.

Seurat possibly created the petite version after he had completed the larger work, which proved to his critics that his innovative pointillist technique could depict nude figures in an interior as La Grande Jatte had for an exterior scene of Parisians in their Sunday best.

The sale beat Seurat’s previous auction record by $115.2m, a 325% rise. The previous record was set by La Rade De Grandcamp (le Port De Grandcamp) (1885), which sold for $34.06m at Christie's on May 8, 2018. The work had been traded 10 times in the past.

A Brief History of Seurat at Auction