This small oil on a thin wood panel is one of 24 painted studies Georges Seurat made while conceiving the large, celebrated painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Although at first glance, the panel seems close to the larger canvas, its 20 or more figures have little to do with the final composition. The trio at right, for example, with the elderly seated figure, was completely rethought in the final composition, in which a man in a top hat and a woman walking a monkey convey a sense of grand solemnity and wry humor - a sophisticated irony that is completely absent in the clumsily positioned figures of the oil panel.