Clown

In the mid-1880s the Cirque Fernando stood on the boulevard de Rochechouart at the foot of Montmartre, a short walk from where the young Toulouse-Lautrec was learning to paint. Its star clown went by Boum-Boum. He was Gerónimo Medrano, a Spaniard, and the name came from the cry he shouted to the band as his cue. This canvas is a study of him from around 1886, worked almost entirely in greys. The face is serious, and the figure is held together by quick, nervous outlines, the kind of line Lautrec would later use to sum up a whole type of person. Faint grid lines under the paint suggest he meant to take it further, but no later version is documented. When Fernando's circus went bankrupt in 1897, Medrano took over the lease and gave the place his own name, Cirque Medrano. In October 2022 a visitor to the Alte Nationalgalerie sprayed fake blood over the glass protecting this painting, and it went to the museum's restoration workshop to be examined.