The Circus, 1889

Name: The Circus, 1889
Brand: Suzanne Valadon
SKU: 10032491
Availability: InStock

Suzanne Valadon

Price range: £125.00 through £335.00

A packed big top, seen from the cheap seats: dark heads and hats in the foreground, flags and lamps overhead, and out in the bright sawdust ring the performers caught mid-act. It is the circus as the crowd sees it, noisy, smoky and glowing.

Warm ochres, deep browns and flickers of red and white make it a lively, sociable picture. Lovely in a living room, a dining room or a hallway, anywhere with a bit of buzz.

The Circus by Suzanne Valadon, in a room setting

Brand: Suzanne Valadon

La Belle Époque, Suzanne Valadon

The Circus, 1889

Suzanne Valadon

The print

Print Quality: Gallery-standard archival pigment giclée, made to order
Media: 308gsm 100% cotton Hahnemühle Photo Rag
Texture & Tone: Super-matte, smooth chalky finish with soft, muted blacks
Longevity: Museum-grade, generational permanence

Photo Rag suits a painting like this especially well. Its soft matte surface holds the thick, quick brushstrokes and the warm, smoky colour of the big top, with no shine.

Sizes available:

50×40cm, 20×16″, fine art print, open edition
70×56cm, 28×22″, fine art print, open edition
100×80cm, 39×31″, fine art print, open edition

Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.

The story

Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938) knew the circus from the inside. As a teenager in Montmartre she worked as an acrobat until a fall ended it, and she went on to model for Renoir, Puvis de Chavannes and Toulouse-Lautrec, watching them paint. She never had a lesson, taught herself by looking, and became a painter in her own right. She was also the mother of the painter Maurice Utrillo.

Helene Schjerfbeck began as a precociously skilled, slightly melancholic late-19th-century academic realist. She finished as a painter whose sublime abstract images are an exquisite harmony of pure paint and cryptic description.

“I have to draw to the point of madness, just draw. Just work, work and think of nothing else”, said the brilliant Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It did him no good, he was just another “degenerate” artist to the Nazis.

From hat shop girl to Dutch art icon. But who was the Girl in the Kimono? The opaque story of an 1890s working class teenager immortalised by George Hendrik Breitner.

Descendant of samurai and relentless entrepreneur, Ogawa Kazumasa opened Tokyo’s first photo studio, shot Japan’s art treasures, the 100 prettiest geisha in Tokyo and taught photography to the military. His legacy is these exquisite images of flowers.

L’Estampe Moderne; the 1890s Parisian Art Nouveau “best of” album feat. various international artists. 4 lithographs every month. Just 3₣r 50c an issue.

It’s easy to see how, in the mid 1800s, Paul Gustave Doré “hypnotized the widest public ever captured by a major illustrator”. Even Van Gogh was a fan, he copied Doré shortly before shooting himself.

In the 1890s the Dutch painter, George Hendrik Breitner took nude reference photos for his paintings. In the 1990s they were found.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. 1880s free love messiah, naturist, pacifist, vegetarian, sun worshipper and unique symbolist painter.

Found photos : Three lost decades of Iowa Speedway recovered. With Merlin Benning, Lester “Red” Dralle. Claus Stricker, Don & Dick Feckers & Red Droste. 1950>1970.

The Art of Protest: Albert Hahn was righteous anger manifest. A graphic character assassin that even the mighty Germany Kaiser feared.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

The 1920s French Art Deco influencer who drew pure design inspiration from the natural world. Insectes (1929) by Émile-Allain Séguy.

The forgotten Finska Vyer birch bark album, by I.K Inha, 1892. Inside are raw natural landscape photographs of Finland. It won the 1st international photographic competion in Paris.

William Morris. Strawberry Thief . “You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds…”

The Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf (1863-1956). A Princess helped him give up the life of a farmer to put his faith and future in the hands of the flower fairies. He lived magically ever after.

Painter & early street photographer. The astonishing early street photography that helped George Hendrik Breitner add social realism to his famous paintings of Amsterdam.

India mid-1800s : Dr John Murray, cholera specialist an photographer. He spent 40 years travelling with gear weighing 400 pounds and a servant. His ever so slightly psychedelic negatives made it all worth it.

Samarkand, early 1900s. The first ever colour photographs of the ancient Persian city by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an unknown Russian who invented his own colour photography process.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

Around the world with the rare travel drawings by the American painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Found in the archives of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

The Circus, 1889

The Circus, 1889

The print

The story

The Circus, 1889

The Circus, 1889

The print

The story

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