O Palhaço

Renoir was 27 and short of money when he took this commission in 1868, from the man who ran the café at the Cirque d'Hiver, the winter circus that still stands in Paris. The figure in the ring is a real performer, an English clown named John Price, who worked the circus with his brother as musical clowns. Renoir gives him a dark costume stitched with big butterflies, red sleeves and stockings, set against the pale sand and the low white wall of the ring. This is early Renoir, painted before the loose, bright Impressionist manner he is known for had fully arrived. The picture is now in the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands.