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Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg), 1879

 
 
 
 
 
Details     Description
   
Artist Renoir, Pierre-Auguste The popular theatre – the variety houses, the circus, the opera, the ballet – enchantedRenoirand his fellow-Impressionists. It offered ideal subjects for their break with tradition: lightness of spirit, moments of pure vision free from involvement with meaning or thought. This painting is a superb example. The two little girls are anonymous performers, a vision briefly seen and quickly gone. Yet somehowRenoirhad preserved the portrait presence of the figures; and though the warm and cool, light and dark tones, the variation of brushwork , and the piquant touches of orange, blue ,and yellow, he had created an apt and lovely image.

 

 
Date 1879
 
Institution Art Institute of Chicago
   
Medium Oil on canvas
 
Dimensions 131.5 x 99.5 cm