The Circus

The Circus was Seurat's final large-scale canvas, left unfinished at his death in 1891 at age thirty-one. It depicts the Cirque Fernando in Paris, a subject also treated by Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas, and represents the culmination of his late interest in circus and cabaret entertainment as subjects for chromoluminarist treatment. Seurat drew on Charles Henry's theories linking upward-curving lines with gaiety and energy, filling the scene with rising diagonal rhythms in the ringmaster's whip, the acrobat's arc, and the layered tiers of spectators. Now at the Musée d'Orsay.

The canvas exploits ascending lines and warm yellow dominants to convey joyful movement, per Seurat's application of Henry's aesthetic theories. The foreground clown turns to face the viewer with near-grotesque stylisation. The pointillist dots here are larger and freer than in earlier work, the painted border a defining feature.