JEAN RICHARD GOUBIE | LE CIRQUE MOLIER (SET OF SEVEN PAINTINGS)

M. Molier, Paris (gifted from the artist)

M. Lopez Windshaw, Paris

Private Collection (by descent from the above, his uncle)

Antoine Cheneviere, London

Private Collection, Virginia (by 1986)

Guarisco Gallery, Washington D.C. (by 2011)

Private Collection, Georgia

The Cirque Molier was one of the most renowned circuses of the late nineteenth century. This amateur circus was famously portrayed in James Tissot’s Women of Paris: The Circus Lover (1885, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). The Cirque Molier was founded by the skilled equestrian and horse trainer Ernest Molier, who built a circus ring at his home on the Rue de Benouville, right outside the gates of the Bois de Boulogne, where he welcomed aristocratic amateur entertainers, such as Count Hubert de la Rochefoucault and Baronne von Walkberg, to perform for other members of the Parisian "high society." Invitations to the Cirque Molier were highly coveted, and the list would have certainly included the wealthy patrons of artists such as Richard Goubie. The present group of seven paintings, which the artist gifted to Ernest Molier himself and may have been studies for a larger painting or poster illustrations or else decorations intended for the big top, would have been just as enthusiastically received by Belle Époque audiences as they are today.