Nothing in the Millet-inspired sowers and reapers prepares us for Seurat's beguiling portrait of his studio mate Aman-Jean, with his spiky hair and air of Bohemian intensity. Long recognized as one of the great 19^th-century portraits, the drawing is also a velvety tribute to art-making itself. A partially effaced spider web of brushes spans the crook of Aman-Jean's arm, and his tilted, white-knuckled hand has an abstract elegance as it adds a touch to the canvas on the easel. Such drawings make clear that experimentation with color was only a part of Seurat's remarkable achievement, and that his true radicalism lay in his art. Working only with a black conté crayon and sheets of coarse-grained artist's paper, he was already making astonishing drawings in his early 20s.