Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg)  1879

The two little circus girls in this painting are Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg, who performed as acrobats in the famed Cirque Fernando in Paris. Although they were depicted in the center of a circus ring, the sisters actually posed in costume in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s studio, enabling him to paint them in daylight. Here he portrayed them just as they have finished the...