Acrobates au Cirque Fernando (Francisca et Angelina Wartenberg)

The two girls are Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg, sisters in a traveling German acrobatic troupe, painted by Renoir in 1879 at the Cirque Fernando, a permanent circus that had opened in the Montmartre district of Paris four years earlier. The Impressionists loved the place. Renoir has made the sisters look like young children, though they were in fact 17 and 14. The oranges the younger one gathers up in her arms are the whole point of the scene. It was the custom for a fine performance to be rewarded with a shower of oranges thrown from the seats, often by children in the audience. Renoir pushed the dark-suited men and the rest of the adult circus up to the very top edge, leaving the floor to the girls and their bright costumes.