Os saltimbancos

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.