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Your galleryAcrobats at the Cirque Fernando
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Look at the oranges gathered against one performer’s chest and scattered on the floor; they are part of the audience’s response.
Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg performed as acrobats at the Cirque Fernando. Renoir posed them in costume in his studio, preferring daylight to the circus’s gas lighting. He then placed them in the ring taking their bows, with oranges thrown by spectators as gifts after the act.
Oil on canvas · 131.2 × 99.2 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Impressionism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg)
- Artist
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Date
- 1879
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 131.2 × 99.2 cm (51 1/2 × 39 1/16 in.); Framed: 160.1 × 129 × 10.2 cm (63 × 50 3/4 × 4 in.)
- Credit line
- Potter Palmer Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.