1888

Georges Seurat depicts a circus trombonist in Parade de cirque (see below image; public domain). In contemporary photographs the circus that Seurat portrays, identified as the popular Cirque Corvi, reveals a trombone hanging from a pillar near its entryway. Advertisement posters of the time depict a clown standing on the central pedestal occupied by the trombonist in Seurat’s painting (Herbert, Seurat 137-143). An exact contemporary of Seurat’s work is seen in Fernand Pelez’s Grimaces and Misery, which depicts a similar scene, this time with two clowns on the central pedestal and three musicians, a clarinetist, trombonist, and bassoonist, seated to the right of center (see below) (Herbert, Seurat 152).