Le Chahut

Georges Seurat painted La Chahut in 1890, during a period when his artistic career was almost entirely dedicated to performances of circus and cabaret acts from Paris. The artist completed La Chahut a year before his death and the painting caused controversy due to its social statement of Parisian nightlife. La Chahut is most likely from a chahut café-concert, for which Seurat's friends and poets Jean Ajalbert and Emile Verhaeren often frequented. Seurat and many other Impressionists had already grown fond of the circus and had begun to depict performers on a mass scale. Similar to Grande Jatte, La Chahut was criticized as being too wooden and mechanical upon its exhibition and such a representation was seen as detrimental to the performers of such shows.