At the Circus

The circus drew modern painters again and again, from Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris to the German Expressionists, and in 1911 Macke took it up on a pane of glass smaller than a postcard, under 12 centimetres high. Inside a matt white ring edged in coral red, a slender acrobat in a gold leotard stands on a black and gold horse. In front, a man in a green tailcoat holds out a hoop to her, and far behind, much smaller and drawn with a fine brush, a white clown waits with a whip. The museum describes all of this, and the frame as well, dotted with violet and moss green, which is part of the picture. On the backing card the painter Gabriele Münter wrote August Macke Bonn, 1911. The museum suggests it was painted in Sindelsdorf, the Upper Bavarian village where Franz Marc lived. That same year Macke painted a larger circus scene, a horsewoman with clowns, now in Münster.