Clown

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A portrait of a clown wearing white face paint and a white cap over his hair. He wears a green and red star-patterned vest over a blue long-sleeved, collared shirt. The background is dark.

Artist Walt Kuhn (American, 1877–1949)

Title Clown

Date 1948

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions Overall: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm)

Credit Line Gift of Charles Simon, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University

Accession Number 79.110

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About this Work

Walt Kuhn was fascinated with the circus and vaudeville, turning to the world of entertainment for much of his subject matter. In the 1940s, Kuhn possessed a press pass to the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, which granted him backstage access during the circus’s performances at New York’s Madison Square Gardens. Kuhn’s portraits of performers and clowns, usually simply seated before a plain background, reveal an intense psychological complexity not often associated with the world of entertainment.

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Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Clown | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=79.110