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Lot Essay
Picasso’s enduring fascination with the circus began in boyhood and can be seen in some of his earliest works, including the famed Rose period Saltimbanques paintings. As with Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges Seurat before him, Picasso frequented the Cirque Médrano in Montmartre and was seduced by the spectacular lights, costumes, music, exotic beasts and acrobatic performances that constituted this urban spectacle.
Drawn in 1968, Scène de cirque is a dynamic, action-packed iteration of the subject. The boldly worked sheet is rich with anecdotal details, providing a strong sense of atmosphere: the captivated audience, an energetic band and an equestrienne astride a galloping horse all animate the composition. The main performance, however, is the dramatic confrontation between a ferocious lion and a scantily-clad lion tamer armed with a trident. The lion’s teeth, claws and mane, formed with sharp scratches of pencil, are cleverly juxtaposed with the lion tamer’s bulbous curves. While lion tamers at the circus were historically male, enacting the “man versus beast” gladiatorial battles of Ancient Rome, the role was redefined in the early nineteenth century, when Lion Queens began to dominate lions and audiences across Europe.
As in many of Picasso’s works, the ravenous lion in the present work can be seen to serve as a symbol for the artist’s libido. The beast lunges dramatically across sheet, with a hunger that is the explicitly violent, but also vaguely erotic. John Richardson has identified the source of these circus fantasies as Picasso's memories of Rosita del Oro, a well-known circus rider and the artist’s first girlfriend in Barcelona. Richardson opined, "The conquest of this star equestrienne by a boy just turned fifteen says a lot for his personality and sexual magnetism. Nor was this a short-lived adolescent fling; it was a relationship that lasted on and off for a number of years. At the very end of his life, however, Rosita comes back to haunt Picasso. His lifelong passion for the circus, his identification with acrobats and clowns, stems from this early romance" (A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I, p. 68).
Picasso’s interest in the circus motif went further than his own biography, however, as he was also intrigued by the variety of the performers. As Rebecca West has written, “The beautiful and the strong and the dignified collaborate with the deformed and the comic, and with the animals. Into the ring go the equestrians and the strong men and the acrobats, the dwarfs and the clowns, the horses and the performing dogs and the monkeys. Out of their incongruity they make a whole which delights; and they achieve this result because each gives an expert performance in the craft he has chosen” (A Suite of 180 Drawings by Picasso, Picasso and the Human Comedy, New York, 1954, p. 26).
Drawn in 1968, Scène de cirque is a dynamic, action-packed iteration of the subject. The boldly worked sheet is rich with anecdotal details, providing a strong sense of atmosphere: the captivated audience, an energetic band and an equestrienne astride a galloping horse all animate the composition. The main performance, however, is the dramatic confrontation between a ferocious lion and a scantily-clad lion tamer armed with a trident. The lion’s teeth, claws and mane, formed with sharp scratches of pencil, are cleverly juxtaposed with the lion tamer’s bulbous curves. While lion tamers at the circus were historically male, enacting the “man versus beast” gladiatorial battles of Ancient Rome, the role was redefined in the early nineteenth century, when Lion Queens began to dominate lions and audiences across Europe.
As in many of Picasso’s works, the ravenous lion in the present work can be seen to serve as a symbol for the artist’s libido. The beast lunges dramatically across sheet, with a hunger that is the explicitly violent, but also vaguely erotic. John Richardson has identified the source of these circus fantasies as Picasso's memories of Rosita del Oro, a well-known circus rider and the artist’s first girlfriend in Barcelona. Richardson opined, "The conquest of this star equestrienne by a boy just turned fifteen says a lot for his personality and sexual magnetism. Nor was this a short-lived adolescent fling; it was a relationship that lasted on and off for a number of years. At the very end of his life, however, Rosita comes back to haunt Picasso. His lifelong passion for the circus, his identification with acrobats and clowns, stems from this early romance" (A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I, p. 68).
Picasso’s interest in the circus motif went further than his own biography, however, as he was also intrigued by the variety of the performers. As Rebecca West has written, “The beautiful and the strong and the dignified collaborate with the deformed and the comic, and with the animals. Into the ring go the equestrians and the strong men and the acrobats, the dwarfs and the clowns, the horses and the performing dogs and the monkeys. Out of their incongruity they make a whole which delights; and they achieve this result because each gives an expert performance in the craft he has chosen” (A Suite of 180 Drawings by Picasso, Picasso and the Human Comedy, New York, 1954, p. 26).