Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg)
The two girls in this painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir are Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg, acrobats who performed in the famed Cirque Fernando in Paris. They are depicted clutching oranges tossed to them from the crowd as gifts. Although they are painted standing in the center of a circus ring, Renoir actually painted them in his studio, where he could take full advantage of natural sunlight.
Colors in this work
Details
- 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.)
- Origin
- France
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Holding institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- art-institute-chicago
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Potter Palmer Collection
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
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Group Portrait Both · 98%
The two named sisters are presented together as the central figures in a portrait-like composition.
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Circus/Carnival Both · 99%
The catalog identifies the Cirque Fernando and the sisters as circus acrobats; the image shows them in performance costumes within a ring before spectators.
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Childhood Both · 95%
The catalog identifies the figures as Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg, describes them as children, and notes that they appear younger than their actual ages of seventeen and fourteen.
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Performing Arts Both · 97%
The sisters are identified as acrobats who have finished their act and are taking their bows; their costumes and gestures reinforce the performance setting.
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Leisure Metadata · 86%
The museum description identifies attending the circus as a popular Parisian pastime and lists leisure among the work’s subjects.
Styles and Movements
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Impressionism Metadata · 100%
The museum metadata classifies the work as Impressionism.
Visual Qualities
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Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 94%
The composition uses luminous pink, yellow, orange, cream, pale blue, and muted green passages, with the costumes and oranges providing especially vivid accents.
Medium and Techniques
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Oil Painting Both · 100%
The work is cataloged as a painting, and the image visibly presents an oil-painted composition.
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Large Brushstrokes/Loose Brushwork Visual · 92%
Visible, soft-edged brushwork builds the figures, ring, and spectators through broken color rather than sharply delineated contours.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 100%
The work is dated 1879, placing it within nineteenth-century art.
Geographic Regions
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French Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog gives France as the place of origin and identifies Renoir as French.
Source & rights
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg). The Art Institute of Chicago.
High-resolution sources
- IIIF image service ↗ 1,686 × 2,254 · Art Institute Chicago · Availability not yet probed