Los saltimbanquis

By 1874 Doré was famous across Europe as an illustrator, his engravings for Dante and the Bible in countless homes, and he badly wanted to be taken seriously as a painter too. This large canvas was part of that ambition. He took the subject from a newspaper, a real account of a travelling circus family whose child had been fatally hurt in a fall during a performance. Doré throws all the light onto the mother and the limp boy in her arms, and leaves the gawking onlookers behind them in near darkness. He had painted a smaller study of the scene the year before, in 1873, now in Denver. This fuller, darker version was bought by the city of Clermont-Ferrand in 1937.