It is most unfortunate that Seurat’s desire to add social commentary to his art precluded him from further advancing the use of color. In both, Grande Jatte and Models, Seurat’s use of color as a mere tool to illuminate the social commentary in the paintings demonstrates how Seurat found content increasingly more important than style and that Seurat was willing to sacrifice his innovation of color so that he could entertain his viewers with social commentary. By sacrificing the very thing for which he initially became famous, the innovative use of colors, Seurat gave up what made him unique as an artist. Seurat’s revision of Models (small version) proved that he could draw Models in a different style and keep the meaning of the painting practically intact. The ability of an artist to change a work of art without much changing its meaning is a bad sign: for it signifies that the method by which the painting conveys meaning is unimportant. Even Roger Fry, who so fervently put forth the perfection of Models, agrees that Models “lacks the great style of most of Seurat’s drawings. It is for such reasons that I cannot share the widely expressed opinion of my fellow critics that this is a greater masterpiece than the Bathers”. (Fry 193) Fry implies that Bathers is such a masterpiece because it is able to convey meaning through its style. Models could be drawn in a different style without much harm to its meaning, but imagine if the same were done for Bathers! Bathers would lose the vibrant, tranquil colors that give it all its meaning.
Although Seurat revolutionized the use of color with his Bathers, Seurat did not seem to recognize that his own strength lay in his use of color and not content. Over his next two paintings, Seurat became increasingly determined to infuse his paintings with social commentary, even at the expense of stylistic innovation. Though the content of Models allows an interesting contrast to be drawn between the plain working class models and the pretentious upper class, one could just as easily imagine the work coming from a number of other neo-classical artists. Though Models was painted with dots of color, Seurat seems to have forgotten that the purpose of the pointillist method was to use vibrant, complimentary colors to create a striking first impression for the viewer. Had Seurat recognized that his greatest strength as an artist lay in his use of color in Bathers, Seurat could have become a more revolutionary artist than he is considered now by furthering the role of color to convey meaning, rather than showing a regression in his use of colors in order to accommodate political messages in his art.