Francis Hamel at Gifford’s Circus

Catalogue Introduction

These paintings are a surprise for me. I visited Gifford’s Circus at Tetsworth at the beginning of last summer having completed all the work for my summer Exhibition with John Martin and was thinking I might have a fallow spell. The Circus put an end to that, the whole atmosphere of this small Circus was really striking; art and anarchy camping in a field near home. I sketched through the performance and in the interval wandered around the wagons and caravans, the tents and bunting and kept on working. Toti and Nell Gifford agreed to let me draw, paint and take pictures of the Circus over the following weeks and since their season ended in September I have continued to work on these pictures.

Some of the pictures are of the show in the “little big top” but I was drawn most to the atmosphere and light in the Circus camp. The wagons and tents and the ropes tieing them to the ground and the spaces they enclose have really gripped me. As I have worked on the pictures the figures that were there, the clouds and other distractions have gradually been weeded out leaving just the spaces, the surfaces the light and the atmosphere.

I have done two or three pieces of work in the theatre recently and there is a very singular feeling you get from going behind the stage and seeing the performance from the “other side”.It was a great luxury to be able to be a voyeur while the artists went in and out of the performances The excitement of being allowed to trespass into this territory has become the subject of some of these pictures, together with the sheer exotic loveliness of seeing a circus parked in a field on a sunny day.

Francis Hamel.
Rousham, January 2007.