Post-Impressionism

At the Circus Fernando: Medrano with a Piglet

Medium: Oil on paper laid down on board
Original size: 57.4 × 37.5 cm (22 5/8 × 14 13/16 in.)
Currently held: Art Institute of Chicago
Movement: Post-Impressionism

A snapshot of Montmartre at its most alive, this small oil on paper captures a circus performer mid-act with the offhand immediacy that made Toulouse-Lautrec unlike any of his contemporaries. Lautrec was a regular at the Cirque Fernando, the covered circus in the 18th arrondissement that drew artists, aristocrats, and working-class Parisians alike. Where academic painters composed and refined, he observed and recorded — his compressed viewpoints, flat planes of colour, and quick gestural marks owe a clear debt to Japanese woodblock prints, which he collected and studied closely. Oil on paper allowed him to work fast and loosely, keeping that sense of caught movement that defined his approach to performance subjects. The Cirque Fernando also inspired Georges Seurat and Edgar Degas during the same period, making it one of the most-painted venues of the late nineteenth century and a genuine crossroads of Post-Impressionist attention. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on fine-grain canvas with artist-grade oils, closely following Lautrec's warm palette and characteristic brushwork, so the energy and spontaneity of the original translate rather than flatten into a facsimile.

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