The Circus Parade (Study)

In the spring of 1887, just after Easter, the Gingerbread Fair spread through the streets around what is now Place de la Nation, on the working-class eastern side of Paris, and stayed for three weeks. Among its attractions was the travelling circus of Ferdinand Corvi. Before each paid show the troupe staged a parade outside, a free turn on a raised platform meant to pull passers-by in through the door. Seurat worked out that scene on this wooden panel, about 17 by 26 centimetres. The tall figure stands on the stage, and the row of dark heads along the bottom edge is the crowd watching for nothing. The finished canvas, Circus Sideshow, was shown in Paris in 1888 and now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was his first night scene, lit by gas jets, and here those lamps appear as bursts of dabs along the top edge. Emil Bührle, a Zurich industrialist and collector, bought the panel in 1951 from the New York firm of Jacques Seligmann, as one of six paintings in a single purchase.