The French Circus During The Impressionist Period: Entertainment, Fantasy, and Contemporary Subject Matter

Introduced to the French Royal Court in 1772 by Englishman Philip Astely, a former cavalry officer turned trick rider, the modern circus did not become a fixture in France until the construction of the Amphitheatre des Sieurs Astely in Paris in 1783. Originally centered around horseback riding, French circuses soon recognized the need to develop new and varied forms of entertainment. By adding new acts to their programs through the years, circuses, with jugglers, clowns, and acrobats, came to resemble, in types of entertainment and atmosphere, the fetes forains, the traveling fairs that crisscrossed France with wrestlers, tightrope walkers, and merchants from around the world. The construction of permanent facilities, allowing year round performances, and the introduction of more thrilling and dangerous acts, such as the trapeze in 1859, eventually elevated the circus to an attraction unique in itself. Although circuses at this time offered the public a bit of everything — theater, vaudeville, athletic contest, drama, and humor — its true attraction lay in its unreal, impossible, fantastic quality. At the circus, “people fly, wild animals are transformed to docile pets, pretty women jump through paper-covered hoops while standing on horseback, and the real identities and personalities of clowns are hidden by colorful costumes and paint.” [1] In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the once trivial and insignificant circus had risen to the status of respected art form.

During the 1860s only one permanent circus existed in Paris, the Cirque d’Ete on the Champs-Elysees built in 1843. This circus attracted, almost exclusively, society’s well-to-do fortunate few. But as leisure and entertainment became more and more of a focal point of larger Parisian society during the 1860s, 70s, and 80s, with operas, restaurants, cafes, cafes-concerts, popular balls, and racetracks in seeming abundance, the circus grew and prospered as well. The Cirque d’Hiver, aimed at a more diverse audience than the Cirque d’Ete, was constructed in 1870 on the Boulevard du Filles-du-Calvaire. It was followed by another in 1875, the Cirque Fernando, built on the corner of Boulevard de Rochechouart and Rue des Martyrs in the poorer, working class district of Montmartre. The 1880s saw the erection of two more important circuses, the Cirque Molier and the Nouveau Cirque in 1880 and 1886, respectively.

Throughout this period of infinite amusements and devotion to the joys of free-time, the Impressionists, many living and working within the inexpensive locale of Montmartre, focused their attention on the painting of modern life; and in a manner uniquely their own they strove to preserve the essence of the moment, the capture of their first impressions. With the Cirque Fernando located in Montmartre, and the other arenas very near, the circus was one of the many diversions frequented by these artists. Like ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Roman artists, like Bruegel, Goya, Daumier, and others, the Impressionists too recorded images of entertainers in the world around them. Although they did not devote a large portion of their work to painting the circus, the Impressionists and their contemporaries, many influenced by Impressionist ideas to some degree, did produce a variety of works that capture exciting, unusual, and intimate views of the circus in late nineteenth-century Paris.

This study will examine the work of three Impressionist and Impressionist-influenced artists who, in their attempt to capture the essence of contemporary life, occasionally looked to the circus for new and relevant subject matter. By the end of this discussion we will have, first, gained an appreciation for and a better understanding of the circus in France and its position in the varied entertainments of Paris; second, explored in some detail several of the circus structures visited by the Impressionists and seen in their paintings; and third, given attention to the works of the artists themselves, works that record their unique vision and impressions of the circus in Paris during its French golden age.

Perhaps the most well-known Impressionist circus painting is Edgar Degas’s Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando done in 1879 (Colorplate 1). Degas uses in his Miss La La the same devices and constructions employed in the many paintings of the ballet at the opera with which he is most identified. Thus, Degas’s Miss La La, as we will see shortly, is not as different from his ballet dancer compositions as first might appear. Moving backward in time for a moment, we will bring forward important information of use later in our discussion of Degas’s Miss La La.

Degas’s shift from historical painting to contemporary subject matter in the 1860s coincided with the discovery of Japanese prints and the growth of photography during the same decade. While having anticipated the snapshot’s abrupt cropping effects, Degas was surely influenced somewhat by Japanese artists’ use of severe angles and looming foregrounds. [2] These devices, along with the use of asymmetrical constructions and unusual points of view, are seen in Degas’s work from the 1860s onward and are discussed, as they apply to his ballet dancers and cafes-concert performers, in thorough, lucid detail by former Yale University Art Professor Robert Herbert in his Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society. Herbert also briefly mentions Degas’s placement of the viewer in suspended, impossible positions — the artist’s own invention — that anticipates advanced twentieth-century cinematic techniques. [3] These potential influences of the 1860s on Degas and his work are important as we now return to his Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. Here La La, a real acrobat known for her feats of strength, grasps a rope by her teeth as she spins in the Cirque Fernando’s dome high above an unseen audience. Quite obvious and striking is Degas’s prominent and repeated use of the diagonal. The line formed by La La’s outstretched arms echoes the line of her bent legs; these two parallel lines, in turn, echo the parallel diagonals of the two separated sets of roof support beams that run through the entire painting. These four parallel diagonals are crossed by the single reverse diagonal of the rope which, by forming on “X” across the canvas, divides the painting into four sections. La La fits neatly into her corner of the picture, the upper-left quadrant, while opposed by the large area of empty space in the “foreground,” the lower-right quadrant. Degas’s off-balance, asymmetrical construction along with the use of the diagonal and an unusual point of view differs little from his ballet dancer compositions; in fact, La La is also a dancer, as light and graceful as any of her earth-bound contemporaries. When comparing Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando to another Degas work, his contemporaneous L’Etoile from 1878, one can clearly observe the common use of all the devices discussed above.

Also of importance in our look at Miss La La is, again, Herbert’s discernment of Degas’s impossible points of view and their connection to modern cinema. Initially we, the viewers, assume our place in the unseen audience; upon closer examination, however, we see that we cannot possibly be part of the crowd. We are nearly beneath La La, much too high and much too close to her to be a seated customer. This unusual point of view exemplifies Degas’s occasional placement of viewers in impossible vantage points; in the painting of Miss La La, we occupy a position only the floating boom of a modern day camera can reach.

Turning our attention away from the figure of Miss La La, the limited view of the Cirque Fernando’s interior seen behind Degas’s performer offers a glimpse of the structure’s grand qualities. Built in 1875, the Cirque Fernando was a sixteen-sided stone building covered by a high cupola. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling while rows of red velvet seats arranged in three tiers encircled the arena’s one-ring center stage. Like all French circuses before the turn of the century, the Cirque Fernando presented its attractions one at a time, one after another. The building was able to seat close to 2,000 spectators with standing room available for roughly 400 more. [4]

The Cirque Fernando was the most inexpensive and most popular circus of the period. It is known that Degas and Auguste Renoir regularly attended performances there, and that Edouard Manet and Puvis de Chavannes were occasional visitors in the company of Degas. [5] At the circus, “French artists could analyze how movement, the relationships of colors and the interplays of light and shadow affected their senses and those of others.” [6] And “more than any other kind of spectacle . . . [the circus] uses the painters’ own language — the language of form and color.” [7] This analysis of color, light, and motion is evident in Degas’s Miss La La. The artist’s orange hues play delicately over a variety of carefully observed interior surfaces set at a variety of angles. This dark background thrusts the twisting, turning, white-outfitted La La forward in the picture plane, fringes fluttering and gold decorations sparkling under bright ceiling lights. Degas also seems to relish the opportunity to depict the Cirque Fernando’s many architectural elements. Columns, capitals, volutes, arches, roof supports with complex decorative cutouts, eight-sided ceiling openings, and three of the building’s sixteen sides are all rendered with great accuracy and sharp detail. Shown at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, Degas’s Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando established a standard for circus representation few artists were able to equal.

One artist who, if not equaling the standard set by Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, came very close was James Tissot, a lifelong friend of Degas. Tissot studied initially, along with Degas, under artist Louis Lamothe, a student of Ingres, and then for a short time in 1857 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Tissot exhibited successfully at the Salon from 1859 to 1870: his work before 1865 historical or religious scenes from the Middle Ages; his work after 1865 scenes of contemporary life with pretty, fashion-conscious Parisian women their focus. During the latter period, from 1865 to 1870, Tissot, for the moment rejecting the “impressionistic” effects used by his friends Degas, Manet, and James Whistler, perfected his formula of “suggesting a narrative, but inviting the viewer to speculate about the situation of [his subjects] while deliberately leaving the story vague and incomplete.” [8] Another important development in Tissot’s work around this time was the inclusion of women who gaze directly at the viewer. Author Christopher Wood, in his book Tissot, attempts an explanation of this gaze or “look” which we will examine more closely later.

In 1871, perhaps fleeing a war-torn Paris, Tissot moved to England where he would spend the next eleven years. Continuing to paint scenes of modern life, now English social climbers and aristocratic want-to-bes, Tissot exhibited regularly, and again successfully, at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery. The influence of the Japanese print, surely the subject of many Degas-Tissot discussions during the 1860s, became apparent in his work from the early 1870s onward, along with the use of a provocative, titillating Tissot motif, the woman subject walking away from the viewer and looking back.

Tissot, by 1876, had established himself as one of the most popular and successful artists in London. This success bewildered Tissot’s friends back in Paris, possibly even provoking a bit of jealousy. After visiting Tissot in London in 1875, Berthe Morisot wrote home to her family that Tissot was “living like a prince . . . turning out very pretty pictures. He sells them for 300,000 [sic] francs a time. So what do you think of success in London?” [9] And Degas, also around 1875, wrote to Tissot, “I hear you’ve bought a house. My mouth is still open.” [10] Tissot’s ability and willingness to give the public what it wanted — something the Impressionists were unwilling to do — while absorbing a variety of influences, including that of Impressionism, paved the way to success. His friendship with Degas and increasingly impressionistic works warranted his invitation to join the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, an invitation Tissot refused. By the end of his eleven years in England, Tissot, it is estimated, earned well over a million francs.

Upon returning to Paris in 1882, Tissot put together an unsuccessful exhibition of over one-hundred works intended to announce his homecoming. This unexpected failure prompted the creation of his La Femme a Paris series, an attempt to impress Parisians and once again impact the Paris art world. Tissot’s La Femme a Paris series of 1883–85 provides us two Parisian circus paintings of great aid and value to our study, The Amateur Circus and The Ladies of the Chariots.

In The Amateur Circus (Colorplate 2), Tissot takes us inside the Cirque Molier. A private circus constructed in 1880 by Ernest Molier, a wealthy aristocrat, the Cirque Molier was a wood structure built around a riding stable at Molier’s home on Rue Benouville near the Bois de Boulogne. The small facility with its small but fashionable audiences provided artists and members of the aristocracy an intimate venue in which to take “turns playing at being clowns and tightrope artists” in front of their own social class. [11] Even though performances were held here only once or twice a year (for 50 consecutive years until 1930), the shows at the Cirque Molier were of great interest to a public curious about the private lives of well-known public personalities. [12]

Two such personalities sit on trapezes in the midst of a performance in Tissot’s Amateur Circus. According to author Philip Dennis Cate, Count Hubert de la Rochefoucauld faces us (his monocle still in place!) while his partner Theophile Pierre Wagner faces in the opposite direction. [13] Rochefoucauld and Wagner, both former Ecole des Beaux-Arts students, undoubtedly typify the Cirque Molier’s cast of performers — performers the La Femme a Paris London exhibition catalog singled out: “Dukes and marquises do not make very good clowns; nor can they perform half as well on the flying trapeze as Leotard and his kindred.” [14] Present at the dukes’ performance is a group of conspicuously uninterested men and women. The men, all looking quite bored, pass the time by talking to one another and admiring ladies near and far; many simply endure the show with arms folded across chests and hands supporting weary heads. The women, however, while no more interested in the show than the men, at least seem to enjoy each other’s company. They too observe others through binoculars but with somewhat pleasant faces. This collective lack of interest in the performance before them, much akin to Mary Cassatt’s Woman in Black at the Opera of 1879, is perhaps Tissot’s accurate depiction of the Cirque Molier’s superfluous “see and be seen” social function in the guise of a sporting event.

Importantly, three female members of The Amateur Circus audience — the woman with binoculars near the center of the painting, just to the right of the Count’s leg; the woman with downturned binoculars at the right edge of the painting, near the feathery red hat; and the woman in pink in the foreground, the focus of the work — all look directly at the viewer. This brings us to a discussion of the “look” found on the faces of many of the women in Tissot’s paintings and to Wood’s assertion that the

“predicament of Tissot’s heroines is a reflection of the ambiguous and paradoxical situation of Victorian women. The position of a woman of a certain social standing was that of a pretty bird in a cage — ornamental, pampered, but trapped within a rigid moral and social code . . . . They [Tissot’s women] gaze out at the spectator with stares full of suppressed restlessness and boredom, as if pleading to be rescued from the intolerable burden of their own beauty.” [15]

While Tissot’s first and foremost intention of the “look” was surely to attract, welcome, and flatter the viewer, Wood’s reference to women trapped within “structures” applies quite well to Tissot’s Amateur Circus. Although our attentive, pink-clad femme and two admirers offer glances devoid of any clearly identifiable emotion, clues abound that hint at entrapment: tight dresses with their many layers squeeze and restrict; three tiers separate women from men, the women’s tier sandwiched between those of the men’s; and women, separated into groups of four, are contained in small partitioned compartments of the center tier. But without any overt signs of the need for help or rescue — in opposition to Wood’s above declaration — and with perhaps only the most minute trace of resignation, Tissot’s affluent, aristocratic women seem to accept their “social imprisonment” and enjoy whatever benefits and rewards it offers. These women, along with the men, do exactly what they came here to do — what they are expected to do — keep a vigilant eye open for new faces that might enter into their exclusive social environment.

The interior decoration of the social venue shown in Tissot’s Amateur Circus, as suggested by Cate, is not that of the Cirque Molier. [16] While Tissot preserves the facility’s actual spatial configuration, he dresses-up the arena in an attempt to elevate the physical stature of the Molier to equal that of its clientele. Interestingly, Tissot’s “fictitious” handling of the interior — his chandelier and three red velvet-lined tiers surrounding a one-ring stage — recalls our earlier description of the interior of the Cirque Fernando, a lower-class circus surely beneath those in attendance at the Molier. Could Tissot have once frequented the Fernando as did his friends Degas and Manet? Could Tissot have superimposed the Fernando’s interior onto his vision of the Molier, a facility he had never entered? Nonetheless, Tissot has adorned the Cirque Molier with elegant gas globes spaced evenly around the ceiling’s outer edge. While these lights illuminate the audience and give prominence to Tissot’s enchanting sea of undulating top hats (a motif possibly borrowed from Manet’s Masked Ball at the Opera of 1873), a large, ornate chandelier that seems to hang from somewhere near the ceiling’s center casts a spotlight upon the ring’s performers. The chandelier, awkwardly placed and inexplicably near the path of the trapeze performers, seems to serve no other purpose than to add interest to a bland, featureless ceiling and account for the abundance of bright light that bathes the arena.

Standing in the ring below the chandelier is another awkward element, the Molier’s circus clown. Typically a happy, animated circus personality, the clown in Tissot’s Amateur Circus, yet another aristocrat in performance, appears strangely unhappy and statuelike. Also unusual is the clown’s costume. The British Union Jack displayed across his chest seems odd and out of place in a painting intended to document contemporary life of Parisian women. Especially unlikely, with the Parisian distaste for all things English, is any reference to England or Britain within the confines of a private circus catering to the whims of the Paris well-to-do. Tissot’s sly inclusion of the Union Jack perhaps hints at his loyalty to a time and place of greater happiness and success.

Tissot’s revamping of the Cirque Molier’s interior also allows him to construct and manipulate the painting’s compositional qualities as he sees fit. First, Tissot’s dark hues consist solely of black and red-based tones that hold the picture together. “Red accents raise the temperature,” says author Michael Wentworth, “and in . . . The Amateur Circus, they bring it to the boiling point . . . . It is not difficult to find Tissot’s essentially black and white picture immediately beneath the surface.” [17] Second, the painting is divided into horizontal sections that alternate between light and dark: the off-white ceiling, the densely crowded seating area, the white ring wall, and the darkly dressed occupants of our second and third tier seating arrangement; additionally, Tissot repeatedly and uniformly contrasts black tuxedos with white shirts. Tissot’s ruddy palette and use of contrast, as perhaps hinted at by Wentworth above, make his Amateur Circus an exercise in light and dark.

Like Degas, Tissot relies heavily on the use of the diagonal. The lines of the exposed ceiling ribs, the red edges of the tier and ring walls, and the closed fan in the hand of the pink-clad woman all slash through the painting in different diagonal directions. The parallel verticals of the trapeze ropes and the roof’s support posts contrast these many diagonals. Tissot, also like Degas, provides us an unusual point of view. We are placed at the front of the third tier, very near one of the few men actually paying attention to the show (the Cirque Molier’s impresario?), directly behind one of the women’s boxes. Significantly, only two women occupy a box designed to hold four, and one of the box’s two empty chairs sits nearby. Ingeniously, Tissot has placed the viewer in a unique position: If we are a man, we take the open spot next to the gentleman absorbed in the show; if we are a woman, we assume the empty seat waiting for us inside the box. Perhaps never has an artist so equally welcomed both men and women into a painting.

In The Ladies of the Chariots (Colorplate 3), our second painting selected from Tissot’s La Femme a Paris series, the artist dispenses with the proper welcome and throws us dangerously close to the performance in progress. Here at the Hippodrome de l’Alma, an enormous amphitheater able to seat 10,000 spectators, we watch the running of a large-scale equestrian event that undoubtedly harkens back to the horse and chariot races of ancient Rome’s Circus Maximus. Built in Montmartre in 1877 between l’Avenue Marceau and l’Avenue de l’Alma, the Hippodrome not only showcased extravagant equestrian events and circuses but also elaborate sports competitions and, when the arena floor was flooded, mock naval battles. Constructed of modern cast-iron building materials and equipped with luminous electric light, a recent invention, the Hippodrome was a state-of-the-art facility that enabled the circus to grow into a larger-than-life entertainment spectacle.

In what Wood calls “one of the most exciting of all pictures of circus life in the nineteenth century,” Tissot successfully captures the ongoing rush of noise, motion, and excitement inside the Hippodrome. [18] Once again, Tissot’s unusual Degas-like point of view involves us intimately in the action. Placed at ringside in The Ladies of the Chariots, we breathe in the dust kicked-up by the swift-moving parade of shiny cars and muscular animals that sweep past; we are awed and pushed back in our seats by the pounding thunder of the horses’ heavy, powerful footsteps and the rumble of chariot wheels rolling over the hard-packed earth of the amphitheater floor. Tissot, just as he did in The Amateur Circus, further establishes the viewer’s place in the audience by showing the viewer the audience. Whereas we alone comprise the entire crowd in Degas’s Miss La La, we are only one of many spectators in Tissot’s Amateur Circus and Ladies of the Chariots. As we observe others around us experience and react to the thrill and excitement of the performance, we observe ourselves; the outward emotions of our fellow spectators are transferred to us: we are they and they are us.

Compositionally, Tissot, in Ladies of the Chariots, uses some of the devices found in The Amateur Circus while introducing a few not seen in the Cirque Molier painting. First, opposing diagonals take on greater prominence in Ladies of the Chariots. Crisscrossing his diagonals throughout the canvas, Tissot sets cast-iron roof support beams against exposed ceiling ribs, opposes the lines of the lowered ceiling above the audience with the lines of the glass panels that connect this ceiling to the Hippodrome’s uppermost ceiling, and counters the foreground equestrian’s whip with the top edge of her chariot. The parallel verticals of the fluted columns, the lines of the glass panels, the green posts in center ring, and the three female equestrians themselves all contrast these many crisscrossing diagonals. Second, Tissot’s dark red and brown palette remains in use, highlighted most strongly only by a short segment of white ring wall, two silver-grey horses, and, of course, the bright white of the uniformly-spaced ornate glass globes.

In addition to the above devices seen in both The Amateur Circus and Ladies of the Chariots, Tissot also introduces a construction only hinted at in The Amateur Circus: his often notable use of leaving space between foreground and background figures. Although no empty space exists visually on the canvas, the lack of a middle distance implies the existence of empty space between the audience at the ring wall and the rearmost chariot driver. The implication of empty space between foreground and background figures or groups creates a tension that serves to capture the viewer’s interest. This separation of figures can be discerned in Tissot’s Amateur Circus, its effectiveness lessened by the placement of the two trapeze performers and the clown within the middle distance. Tissot also utilizes the cropping effects discussed earlier and attributed to Degas. In Ladies of the Chariots, the horses pulling the cars enter the painting from the right and exit at the left. On both sides of the canvas, the left and right edges, the heads of the horses are attenuated wholly and partially, respectively. This quality of a captured moment, the perceived freezing of an instant in time, along with the tension created by Tissot’s separation of figures, arouses an intense curiosity concerning the action taking place in the unseen portions of the Hippodrome.

The action we do see, as mentioned earlier, takes place immediately before us. Unlike the performance at the Cirque Molier, where the male acrobats bask in attention, the show here at the Hippodrome is played out by female performers who seem to desire escape from attention; thus, it is virtually impossible to ignore or not notice the varying degrees and intensities of the “look” offered us by the three chariot drivers. Once again we touch upon Wood’s idea of Tissot’s women protagonists trapped within “structures” and his observation that “very few of [Tissot’s] characters seem to be enjoying themselves” [19] Much like the Molier’s circus clown, all three chariot drivers possess clear expressions of unhappiness; however, the second driver (the woman at the right edge of the painting), who along with her horse looks directly at us, offers an additional and unmistakable look of derision, scorn, and disdain while, seemingly against her will, maintaining a perfectly erect and elegant posture. Especially interesting is that this look of contempt and defiance seems to be at odds with the qualities of the personage her costume greatly resembles — the Statue of Liberty, soon to become, in 1886, a universal symbol of freedom and friendship.

Leaving the enormity of the Hippodrome and returning once more to the intimacy of the Cirque Fernando, we recall that Renoir often attended performances here in search of new subject matter and to further study the effects of color, light, and motion in an indoor environment. Two paintings from 1879, Jugglers at the Cirque Fernando and Two Little Circus Girls, document Renoir’s visits to the Fernando. In turning our attention to the latter work, we will change direction a bit by looking not at circus performers in action, but at performers at rest between acts.

In Two Little Circus Girls (Colorplate 4), Renoir captures the daughters of circus owner Fernando Wartenberg selling oranges during a break in the show. Oranges were a rare treat in nineteenth-century France, sold at the circus much like popcorn is today. [20] But Renoir’s girls are not just helpers at the circus; they, like many other children, were often included in the show. Performing on horseback, balancing on a tightrope, or completing the upper-portion of a human pyramid, children just like Renoir’s circus girls made up a small but significant part of the circus’s cast of seasoned, talented, and accomplished performers. The direct involvement of children in the circus brings to mind Charles Baudelaire’s statement that “genius is childhood retrieved” and the attempts to equate the powerful attraction of the circus with the ephemeral, magical qualities of youth: “The allure of the circus,” says author Dean Jensen, “is explained by its appeal to the child in all of us,” while American John Ringling of Ringling Brothers once said that the “circus is a drop of water from Ponce de Leon’s spring.” [21] Perhaps the circus’s inclusion of children as performers not only heightened its qualities of the fantastic but also accounted for, in part, the circus’s ability to make all feel young for a moment in time.

Renoir’s picture of the two innocent young acrobats shows his interest in painting the human form and, as do most of his female figures, a strong resemblance to Lise, his longtime love. Also evident in Two Little Circus Girls is Renoir’s use of the diagonal. Just as in the Degas and Tissot paintings discussed earlier, the diagonal here too constitutes the foundation of the composition: Renoir’s offset figures — the girl on the left placed higher in the picture plane than her sister on the right — form a diagonal paralleled by the diagonal line of the ring wall near the top edge of the painting. The costumes worn by Renoir’s circus girls, much like the gold-accented costumes worn by Degas’s Miss La La and Tissot’s chariot drivers, also sparkle under bright lights, their shiny tassels and flowery decorations throwing off brilliant flashes of sharp, flickering color as the girls move about the ring. The visual qualities of light, color, and motion so ardently studied by Renoir are exceptionally vivid in this quiet, intimate moment at the Cirque Fernando.

As our study of these four late nineteenth-century circus paintings has shown, the circus in Paris satisfied the different needs of different people: For the working class, the circus was pure entertainment and escape; for the artist, who was most often a member of the working class, the circus supplied new and contemporary subject matter; and for the aristocracy and social elite, the circus could become an exclusive social environment in which a select few could revel in seeing and being seen. The ability of the circus to profoundly touch and soothe different segments of Parisian society, along with its one-act-at-a-time program, remained virtually unchanged throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. But the ever-present influence of the American circus — the loud, fast-paced, non-stop, three-ring format — eventually forced change and transformed the small, one-ring French circus into a larger, less-intimate spectacle. Parisians in great numbers flocked to these extravagant shows for a short time; soon, however, public interest declined as the motion picture grew in popularity and slowly became a favored form of entertainment.

Typical of this rapid change in entertainment taste was the Hippodrome de l’Alma seen in Tissot’s Ladies of the Chariots. As stated previously, the Hippodrome provided more than enough room for the circus to expand and grow. But even though the Hippodrome “gave performances on a grand scale,” it soon proved much too large. [22] Due to an environment far less intimate than that of one-ring circuses, such as the Cirque Fernando, and the lack of consistently large crowds, the Hippodrome de l’Alma was closed and torn down in 1897. When it was rebuilt in Montmartre in 1900, very near the Fernando, the newer and smaller Hippodrome still suffered from irregular and insufficient attendance even though it now held only 5,000 spectators. Soon thereafter, in 1911, the Hippodrome was converted into a successful movie theater (Degas’s cinematic visions realized) that held 3,500 patrons. More notable, however, is the longevity of the Cirque Fernando. Taken over by a circus clown in 1897 and renamed the Cirque Medrano after its new owner, the Cirque Fernando/Medrano remained in use on the corner of Boulevard de Rochechouart and Rue des Martyrs until it was finally torn down in 1972 — ninety-seven years after its construction.

The circus in France, despite many changes, continued to provide unique entertainment throughout the twentieth century. Artists from Picasso and Klee to Rouault and Chagall still found the circus and its performers worthy subject matter for many of their paintings; so too will artists of the future. For despite the modern magic of computers and the continuing allure of television and movies, nothing can adequately replace the color and motion, the taste and smell, and the thrill, excitement, and fantasy of the circus.

Jane M. Comstock, Senior Instructor in Art History at the University of Colorado at Denver: Ron received honors for his academic accomplishments while an undergraduate at UCD, including recognition in the Department of Fine Arts: I nominated his paper “The French Circus During the Impressionist Period: Entertainment, Fantasy, and Contemporary Subject Matter” for the Denver Art Museum College Symposium to be held in April 1995. To be candid, I rarely nominate a student who is not an art history major, but Ron’s paper was clearly the best choice for 1993–1994.

[1] Philip Dennis Cate, “The Cult of the Circus,” in Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991). 38.

[2] Steven Adams, The Impressionists (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1990), 70. Ian Dunlop, Degas (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 64.

[3] Robert Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 91.

[4] Dean Jensen, Center Ring: The Artist (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1981), 19. Barbara Stern Shapiro, “Circuses and Fairs” in Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991), 167.

[5] Shapiro, “Circuses,” 167.

[6] Jensen, Center Ring, 31.

[7] Ibid., 25.

[8] Christopher Wood, Tissot (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 42.

[9] Ibid., 81.

[10] Ibid., 81.

[11] Michael Wentworth, James Tissot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 166.

[12] Cate, “Cult,” 42.

[13] Ibid., 43.

[14] Russell Ash, James Tissot (New York: Abrams, 1992).

[15] Wood, Tissot, 12, 11.

[16] Cate, “Cult,” 43.

[17] Wentworth, James Tissot, 167.

[18] Wood, Tissot, 132.

[19] Ibid., 12.

[20] Helen Harkonen, Circuses and Fairs in Art (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1965), 44.

[21] Jensen, Center Ring, 25.

[22] Shapiro, “Circuses,” 169.