Gustave Doré: The Family of Street Acrobats - the injured child (1873)

(Denver Art Museum, Denver , USA)

A painting by the French artist Gustave Doré (1832-1883). This piece was part of a now lost twelve-part series entitled Paris tel qu'il est ("Paris as it is"). Together with other series such as "London: A Pilgrimage", it shows the contemporary life of the urban poor with both poignant realism and dreamlike fantasy. According to notes by Doré himself, he had witnessed while in Paris the scene shown here. It represented "...the tardy awakening of nature in those two hardened, almost brutalized beings. To gain money they have killed their child, and in killing him they have found out that they have hearts.". Painting from 1873.