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Lot Essay
The circus parade–the street-side show advertising the attractions of the “big top” within–begins. “The instruments are making as much noise as they can,” Léger declared in his preface to the print folio Le Cirque, 1950. “All this hullabaloo is projected from a raised platform. It hits you right in the face, right in the chest. It’s a magic spell. Behind, beside, in front, appearing and disappearing—faces, limbs, dancers, clowns ...the acrobat who walks on his hands, and that music ...makes all those faces with staring eyes approach, become caught, and climb up the steps that lead them to the ticket booth, and on with the music! And it begins again to swallow up the undecided... Go in and look around ...magic for four pennies; undoubtedly something will happen. The Future as old as the world” (E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger: Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, pp. 175 and 176).
Léger made the circus a signature theme, a thread that runs through his oeuvre from start to finish. In a series of seven paintings done in 1918 (Bauquier, nos. 108-114), he depicted the Cirque Médrano of Montmartre, which Degas, Renoir, Seurat, Lautrec, Picasso, van Dongen, and Chagall had featured in their art. The circus became for Léger the epitome of the modern spectacle and grand public entertainment; he believed le cirque to be, moreover, a genuine art of the people, a living tradition that was quintessentially French. Following the end of the Second World War, when Léger returned to Paris from his exile in America to take part in the rebuilding of his country, he was again drawn to the circus as an expression of national pride. The Cirque Médrano was still open, and remained an apt symbol of popular esprit and joie de vivre, embodying the nation’s desire to aspire and excel in the face of daunting post-war challenges, while enjoying a return to peacetime diversions.
By the beginning of the 1950s the circus theme had come to dominate Léger’s art. Tériade published Le Cirque, a magnificent folio of 34 color and 29 black-and-white lithographs, in 1950 (Saphire, nos. 44-106). A compendium of Léger’s circus subjects, past and present, Le Cirque inspired many oil paintings and studies on paper to come. The present gouache is closely related to Étude pour ‘La grande parade’, 1953 (Hansma and du Prey, no. 1530), completed soon after Léger painted La grande parade, 1er état (no. 1517). The circus theme culminated in the crowning work of the artist’s career, La grande parade, état définitif, completed in 1954 (no. 1591). The pair of dancing girls, accompanied by the clown on a banjo—but without the acrobat—appears at left of center in both versions of the mural.
Léger made the circus a signature theme, a thread that runs through his oeuvre from start to finish. In a series of seven paintings done in 1918 (Bauquier, nos. 108-114), he depicted the Cirque Médrano of Montmartre, which Degas, Renoir, Seurat, Lautrec, Picasso, van Dongen, and Chagall had featured in their art. The circus became for Léger the epitome of the modern spectacle and grand public entertainment; he believed le cirque to be, moreover, a genuine art of the people, a living tradition that was quintessentially French. Following the end of the Second World War, when Léger returned to Paris from his exile in America to take part in the rebuilding of his country, he was again drawn to the circus as an expression of national pride. The Cirque Médrano was still open, and remained an apt symbol of popular esprit and joie de vivre, embodying the nation’s desire to aspire and excel in the face of daunting post-war challenges, while enjoying a return to peacetime diversions.
By the beginning of the 1950s the circus theme had come to dominate Léger’s art. Tériade published Le Cirque, a magnificent folio of 34 color and 29 black-and-white lithographs, in 1950 (Saphire, nos. 44-106). A compendium of Léger’s circus subjects, past and present, Le Cirque inspired many oil paintings and studies on paper to come. The present gouache is closely related to Étude pour ‘La grande parade’, 1953 (Hansma and du Prey, no. 1530), completed soon after Léger painted La grande parade, 1er état (no. 1517). The circus theme culminated in the crowning work of the artist’s career, La grande parade, état définitif, completed in 1954 (no. 1591). The pair of dancing girls, accompanied by the clown on a banjo—but without the acrobat—appears at left of center in both versions of the mural.