Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque)1887–88
Under the glow of gas lamps, a trombonist stands on a platform outside a travelling circus in Paris, flanked by musicians and a ringmaster, while spectators line up in silhouette along the bottom edge. More about this work
About this work
Under the glow of gas lamps, a trombonist stands on a platform outside a travelling circus in Paris, flanked by musicians and a ringmaster, while spectators line up in silhouette along the bottom edge. The scene is a parade, the free sample of entertainment staged to lure passers-by into a paid show. Seurat painted it with small, separate touches of colour and built the composition on strict horizontals and verticals, creating an eerie, frozen stillness. He exhibited it at the Salon des Indépendants in 1888.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Georges Seurat
French, 1859–1891 · Born and died in Paris.
Seurat trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied the colour theories of Chevreul and others before developing pointillism, building pictures from small, separate touches of pure colour meant to combine in the eye. His large compositions, planned through many drawings and oil sketches, include Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, shown at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. His black conté crayon drawings are equally distinctive. He died suddenly at thirty-one.
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 Met 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
- 61.101.17
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Paintings
- Department
- European Paintings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
