At the Circus: Trained Pony and Baboon1899
A trained pony and a baboon perform in the ring, drawn in pastel and graphite entirely from memory. More about this work
About this work
A trained pony and a baboon perform in the ring, drawn in pastel and graphite entirely from memory. In 1899, after a breakdown brought on by alcoholism, Toulouse-Lautrec was confined to a clinic at Neuilly, outside Paris, and to show his doctors that his mind and hand were sound he made a series of some forty circus drawings, recalling acts he had watched for years. The odd, lonely spaces of many of these sheets give them an unsettling, dreamlike quality.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A work made of pastel and graphite on cream wove paper.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Pastel
- Sticks of almost pure pigment with very little binder. The colour sits on the paper as powder: bright, matte and fragile.
- Graphite
- Pencil. Graphite has been used for drawing since the 1500s; in 1795 Nicolas-Jacques Conté mixed it with clay, so its hardness could be graded.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
French, 1864–1901 · Born in Albi; died in Saint-André-du-Bois.
Toulouse-Lautrec came from an aristocratic family in Albi; after two leg fractures in his teens his legs stopped growing, and he turned to art. Trained in Paris under Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon, he settled in Montmartre and recorded its dance halls, cabarets, circuses and brothels with quick, incisive line. His colour lithograph posters for the Moulin Rouge and its performers transformed the street poster. He died at the family’s Château de Malromé at the age of thirty-six.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who kept Impressionism's colour but pushed towards structure, symbol and feeling.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1944.581
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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