In the Wings

Jean Louis Forain · 1899

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

60.5 × 73.8 cm (23 3/16 × 29 1/16 in.); Framed: 82.6 × 95.6 × 11.5 cm (32 1/2 × 37 5/8 × 4 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

*In the Wings* offers an intimate glimpse behind the spectacle — figures caught in the hushed, liminal moment before performance begins, rendered with the unsentimental clarity that defined Forain at his best. Jean Louis Forain moved freely among the Impressionists, befriending Manet and Degas and absorbing their fascination with modern Parisian life. Like Degas, he was drawn to the theater not for its glamour but for what happens off-stage — the waiting, the fatigue, the private faces performers wear when the audience cannot see them. His handling of artificial light is particularly assured here, the dim gaslight of the wings casting shadows that feel both observed and felt. Where Degas approached similar subjects with cool detachment, Forain brings a warmer, slightly more journalistic eye, shaped no doubt by his parallel career as one of France's most celebrated satirical illustrators. Forain exhibited with the Impressionists in their fourth and fifth group shows in 1879 and 1880, one of the few non-core members to do so on multiple occasions. A hand-painted oil reproduction of *In the Wings* preserves the tonal subtlety and painterly texture that print reproductions flatten — the soft weight of fabric, the atmospheric depth of the darkened stage space — giving the work the physical presence it was always meant to have.