La Femme au trapeze

Felicien Joseph Victor Rops

This image was probably done while Rops was working with the French publisher and print dealer Alfred Cadart in Paris and he had access to an etching studio. He did this image in seven states, this being the fourth.

Felician Rops creates a strong sense of weightiness in the body of the trapeze artist, an atypical view. Her dark-ringed eyes gaze wearily back at the viewer. The scene is static, and yet activity is indicated by the presence of the trapeze, on which she can become graceful and gravity can be defied. She appears to be weary, perhaps of being eternally watched by the circus audience, the artist, and we, the spectators.