Gifford Beal often depicted life’s exuberant side, focusing on festive places such as the circus, where many people spent their leisure time. Located near Times Square and built in 1905, the New York Hippodrome was an enormous entertainment venue. Here, Beal captured a moment during rehearsal, as a stage crew prepares for the evening show. Together the vivid colors, the figures’ exaggerated and strenuous poses, and the dramatic stage lights convey the event’s pageantry. The empty seats and trapeze bars suggest the excitement to come, when spectators and acrobats fill the theater.
Beal’s portrayal of a group of circus clowns in the foreground includes one figure who appears to be in blackface, visceral evidence of the racist stereotyping that permeates American culture. Performers in blackface were regular fixtures of theater, circus, and vaudeville productions throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century. These routines relied on comedy, derision, and distortion to normalize negative perceptions of African Americans, assert white superiority among performers and viewers, and perpetuate inequality.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Florence Barlow Ruthrauff, “In the Field of Art,” The Spur 15, 8 (April, 1915): 30 (ill.).
Eugen Neuhaus, Painters, Pictures and the People (San Francisco: Philopolis Press, 1918), pl. 22.
Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 19, as Spotlight (At the Hippodrome).
Judith A. Barter et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), cat. 84, as At the Hippodrome (Spotlight).
New York, National Academy of Design, Ninetieth Annual Exhibition, Mar. 20–Apr. 25, 1915, cat. 336.
Buffalo, NY, Albright Art Gallery, The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Tenth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, May 22–Aug. 30, 1915, cat. 8.
Detroit Museum of Art, Exhibition of Works by Twelve American Painters, April 1916, cat. 31.
Rochester, NY, The Memorial Art Gallery, Paintings by Twelve Contemporary American Artists, May 1916, cat. 1.
Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Sixth Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, Dec. 17, 1916–Jan. 21, 1917, cat. 262.
Art Institute of Chicago, Thirtieth Annual Exhibition of American Oil Paintings and Sculpture, Nov. 8, 1917–Jan. 2, 1918, cat. 6, as Spotlight.
Art Institute of Chicago, Seven Special Exhibitions: Sculpture by Jo Davidson, Paintings by Guy Wiggins, Charles H. Woodbury, Alfred Juergens, John H. and Anna Lee Stacey, Gifford Beal, W. Elmer Schofield and Eugene Speicher, Paintings and Pastels by William Penhallow Henderson, Dec. 17, 1920–Jan. 18, 1921, cat. 5, as Hippodrome.
Detroit Institute of Arts, Exhibition of Paintings by Gifford Beal, Eugene Speicher, and Elmer W. Schofield, Apr. 1–18, 1921, cat. 8.
The Renaissance Society, The University of Chicago, American Oil Paintings and French Watercolors, Feb. 6–Mar. 1, 1929.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–Nov. 1, 1933, cat. 503, as The Spotlight.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 42, as Spotlight.
Mr. Martin A. Ryerson (1856–1932) and Mrs. Carrie Ryerson (1859–1937), Chicago, by 1923; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.
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