The Circus

1891

Oil on canvas, 186 × 152 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

A bareback rider, an acrobat, a ringmaster and a clown perform before tiers of spectators. It followed the sideshow and the cancan as his third scene of popular entertainment at night.

The ring and performers are drawn in curves and spirals, while the stands and audience stay rigid and square. The contrast follows Charles Henry's ideas on how lines affect feeling.
It hung unfinished at that spring's Indépendants, and diphtheria killed him within days of the opening.
Look at the flat blue frame: he began painting it, and friends completed it.
The palette is largely white, broken by small touches of red, yellow and blue.
The American collector John Quinn left it to the French national museums.

Its color draws on Chevreul and Rood's color theory. After the painter's death it belonged to his mother, then to Signac by 1900.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art