Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando) (1887–88): Artwork and History

Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando) (1887–88) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This work, set at a circus, captures the tense moment in which a female trick rider prepares to stand up on her horse and leap through a paper hoop held by a clown. The horse gathers speed, spurred on by the whip of famous ringmaster Monsieur Loyal. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec may have based the garishly made-up rider, dressed in a tutu of gauze and sequins, on Suzanne Valadon, a former circus performer, model, and artist with whom he had a nearly three-year relationship. The rider seems to snarl at Monsieur Loyal, who glares back at her. Toulouse-Lautrec’s setting is the same circus in Montmartre depicted in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s portrait of the Wartenberg sisters. This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection.

Object facts

• Title: Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando)
• Date: 1887–88
• Artist attribution: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 100.3 × 161.3 cm (39 1/2 × 63 1/2 in.); Framed: 123.2 × 181 × 8.3 cm (48 1/2 × 71 1/4 × 3 1/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1925.523

Collection credit

Joseph Winterbotham Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.