Woman with a Monkey

Woman with a Monkey (1884) is one of several panel studies made for La Grande Jatte in which individual figures from the final composition were studied in isolation. A fashionable woman with a small pet monkey on a lead appears in the right foreground of the Grande Jatte itself, and this study captures her from a slightly different angle, exploring the divisionist rendering of her elaborate costume in full afternoon light. The monkey signifies fashionable status in the contemporary bourgeois imagination.

The figure's elaborate dress is rendered in careful divisionist dots that separate highlight, mid-tone, and shadow through chromatic rather than tonal means. The monkey provides a darker accent at the lower frame. The panel's brushwork is more confident and systematic than the earliest studies.