Parade de cirque

Parade de cirque
English: Circus Sideshow
Artist	Georges Seurat
Year	1887-88
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	99.7 cm × 140.9 cm (39.25 in × 59 in)
Location	Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Website	Museum page

Parade de cirque (English: Circus Sideshow) is an 1887-88 Neo-Impressionist painting by Georges Seurat. It was first exhibited at the 1888 Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants (titled Parade de cirque, cat. no. 614) in Paris, where it became one of Seurat's least admired works. Parade de cirque represents the sideshow (or parade) of the Circus Corvi at place de la Nation, and was his first depiction of a nocturnal scene,^[1] and first painting of popular entertainment. Seurat worked on the theme for nearly six years before completing the final painting.

Art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. described Parade de cirque as one of Seurat's most important paintings, its 'formality' and 'symmetry' as highly innovative, and placed it as "the most geometric in design as well as the most mysterious in sentiment" of Seurat's major canvases.^[2]

Circus Sideshow influenced the Fauves, Cubists, Futurists and Orphists. It is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960, accession number: 61.101.17, Gallery 826).^[3]