Chevaux de cirque
This conversation is connected to Chevaux de cirque.
Raoul Dufy painted Chevaux de cirque in 1924, in gouache over pochoir on toned paper. Dufy grew up in Le Havre alongside Othon Friesz — they studied together, moved to Paris together, and both passed through Fauvism before going in very different directions. By the 1920s Dufy had developed the loose, fast style he's best known for, applying thin washes of color over quick drawing in a technique sometimes called stenographic. Horses and handlers fill the composition in a tumble of white, brown, pink, and blue, with a ringmaster planted in the center. The circus was a major subject for Parisian painters from Toulouse-Lautrec onward, and Dufy painted it repeatedly — other versions are now in the National Gallery in Washington and the Centre Pompidou.