Life behind the scenes of a circus was less than idyllic. Owners often cared little for performers, and animals were treated cruelly. Painted insights from Degas, Renoir, and others.
Seurat
From the eighteenth century, organised circuses toured cities, and some were established to operate year-round. Here are paintings to make you gasp with wonder.
Why do Canaletto’s gondolas not have shadows? Where did Cézanne get his shadows wrong, and why, and what colour are shadows really?
Slow to be taken up, as they were so expensive and Chrome Yellow almost as good, they then came to dominate palettes, until their sudden fall from favour.
Two pigments: straight Chromium Oxide, which is rather dull, and the more intense Viridian. Paintings by Böcklin, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Seurat, van Gogh, and Cézanne.
It’s not a colour at all, say some, while the Impressionists wanted to banish it from the palette. But throughout the history of painting, the blackest black has remained vital.
Introduced in about 1806, it was used by Turner, Friedrich, Delacroix, Corot, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists, and many others. With examples of those works.
Including superb coastal views by Winslow Homer, Monet, Seurat, Sorolla, and van Rysselberghe. The clifftop is a great place from which to paint.
Putting Degas’ many paintings and drawings of the ballet and its dancers into context – here are contemporary paintings.
His style avoided sentimentality, showing life on the land as it really was. His paintings were faithful expression of what country life was really like for the poor.
The Eclectic Light Company 