Parade de cirque

Parade de cirque (English: Circus Sideshow) is an 1887-88 Neo-Impressionist painting by Georges Seurat. It was first exhibited at the 1888 Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants (titled Parade de cirque, cat. no. 614) in Paris, where it became one of Seurat's least admired works. Parade de cirque represents the sideshow (or parade) of the Circus Corvi at place de la Nation, and was his first depiction of a nocturnal scene, and first painting of popular entertainment. Seurat worked on the theme for nearly six years before completing the final painting. Art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. described Parade de cirque as one of Seurat's most important paintings, its 'formality' and 'symmetry' as highly innovative, and placed it as "the most geometric in design as well as the most mysterious in sentiment" of Seurat's major canvases. Circus Sideshow influenced the Fauves, Cubists, Futurists and Orphists. It is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960, accession number: 61.101.17, Gallery 826). Circus Sideshow is a large oil painting on canvas measuring . Painted in the Divisionist style, the work employs pointillist dots of color (primarily violet-gray, blue-gray, orange, and green) and a play of lines governed by rules whose laws Seurat had studied. It depicts immobile figures outdoors under artificial lighting at the sideshow of the Circus Corvi at place de la Nation, a working-class quarter in eastern Paris. A row of cornet and trombone players in solemn formation are seen under the unreal evening lights of a parade. The work is dominated by a monotony of horizontal and vertical lines, suggesting the rhythms of Egyptian reliefs and frescoes. Though rather than indicating distance as Egyptian art (by changing scale), or classically (by foreshortening), Seurat establishes the position of his subjects through lighting. Those in the foreground are unlit, painted in dark blue, while those behind the gas jets are brilliantly lit.