Amazona (En el Circo Fernando)

In 1888 the Cirque Fernando sat at the foot of Montmartre, one of the first permanent circuses in Paris and a favourite haunt of painters. Toulouse-Lautrec, who had grown up around his father's horses but whose own legs had failed him, went not to the performances but to the rehearsals, watching the bareback rider and her horse run the same circuit again and again. He set the ring at a steep, tilted angle, the way a spectator leaning over the barrier would actually see it, and left the paint thin and quick, almost a drawing. When the Moulin Rouge opened its doors in October 1889, this canvas was hanging in the entrance foyer, bought by the owner Joseph Oller to greet the first crowds.