Whereas Grande Jatte conveyed its social satire primarily through the showy reds and rigid lines, Models conveys its social message-- the contrast between the artificiality of the bourgeoisie and the natural purity of the naked, working-class models--completely through its content. The entire left half of Models consists of Seurat’s Grande Jatte. If the mere inclusion of a painting within a painting does not imply that the relationship between the two paintings is significant, then Seurat drives the point home with his complex arrangement of objects and figures. Fry observes that “one feels that the poses have been found in order to fit a preconceived geometric scheme. Certainly the position of every single object…has been ascertained to an almost incredible nicety.” (Fry 192) The ornate placement of each object works to maintain “the constant visual badinage between elements of the real (the studio) and those of the artificial (the painting).” (Nochlin 74) The juxtaposition of a standing nude model next to the tall bourgeoisie woman in Grande Jatte, the replacement of the monkey in Grande Jatte by the left-most model, the illusion that the dog in Grande Jatte seems to be jumping for the stick on the left side of the studio, and the presence of recognizable feathered hats, parasols, and dresses cast onto the floor of the studio all work to contrast the openness of the models with the pretentious woman in Grande Jatte. Without any sort of innovative stylistic spin, Seurat’s use of content is much too overt. He doesn’t hint at the contrast between Grande Jatte and the models, but spoon-feeds the contrast to the viewer using blatant symbols.
In Models, Seurat relies completely on content to accomplish his social contrast between the bourgeois and the working class: Model’s color serves merely to balance the painting. The biggest difference between the use of color in Models and in Seurat’s first two major works is that there is minimal use of complimentary colors in Models. Although the most prominent colors in Models are red and green, which are complimentary colors, the two colors never touch each other and therefore do not work to amplify each other as they do in Grande Jatte. Most of the painting is washed in a haze of purple, which detracts from the vibrancy of the painting. Whereas in Bather, Seurat was able to illuminate the bathers flesh by using solid strokes of white, in Models Seurat tries too hard to make his flesh realistic by putting miniscule dots of flesh color. Although Seurat uses the dots of the pointillist technique, he does not use any of the color strategies he learned while studying Delacroix, which undermines Seurat’s work.