Georges-Pierre Seurat / Circus Sideshow / 1887-88Georges-Pierre Seurat
Circus Sideshow
1887-88

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Creator Name: Seurat, Georges
Creator Nationality: European; French
Creator Role: Artist
Creator Dates/Places: French, 1859-1891
Creator Name-CRT: Georges-Pierre Seurat
Title: Circus Sideshow
View: Full View
Creation Start Date: 1887
Creation End Date: 1888
Creation Date: 1887-88
Object Type: Paintings
Materials and Techniques: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 39 1/4 x 59 in. (99.7 x 149.9 cm)
AMICA Contributor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Owner Location: New York, New York, USA
ID Number: 61.101.17
Credit Line: Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960
Rights: http://www.metmuseum.org/
Context:

A parade, the free entertainment offered at the entrance of a traveling theatre, is intended to attract a crowd and encourage the sale of tickets. Seurat painted this extraordinary work during six months in 1887-88 and showed it at the fourth exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, in 1888. It was his first attempt to render the effects of artificial light at night using the Pointillist technique and seems to have been inspired by a lecture on artificial light by James McNeill Whistler that was translated into French and published by the poet Stephen Mallarmé. Seurat achieved an unprecedented effect in the rendering of the illumination from the row of gas jets.

"La Parade" is also Seurat's first systematic application of the scientific theories of Charles Henry (1859-1926) regarding the relationship between aesthetics and the physiology and psychology of the senses. By 1890 Seurat had formulated an aesthetic based on these theories that explains his intentions in "La Parade": "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary and similar elements of tone, of color, and of line, considered according to their dominants and under the influence of light, in gay, calm, or sad combinations . . . . Gaiety of tone is given by the luminous dominant; of color, by the warm dominant; of line, by lines above the horizontal."


AMICA ID: MMA_.61.101.17
AMICA Library Year: 2000
Media Metadata Rights: Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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