Elephant Act

Robert Riggs's Elephant Act features the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus act billed as Captain Lawrence Davis and his performers with "trunks of new tricks." Positioning the viewer as if in a front row seat, Riggs depicts the elephants parading on their hind legs around the ring. Towering over their trainer, the massive animals obey the guiding touch from a long, thin pole grasped in the man's raised right hand. In the center, a pretty woman triumphantly rides one elephant, while two other trainers stand on the right, one wielding a pole. At the upper right, a masked acrobat dangles from a rope ladder. At left, a clown extends a pole toward a shapely aerialist whose form is cropped by the edges of the image.

This lithograph reflects the artist's fascination with the circus. Along with his Tumblers (TF 1996.43), it is one of fifteen lithographs inspired by circus subjects that Riggs made between June 1933 and early 1935. Captivating in its subject, Elephant Act is also remarkable for Riggs's skill in rendering a range of gray tones to evoke the elephants' coarse hides and wrinkled trunks. The artist achieved near-photographic realism using a subtractive method of drawing on the lithographic stone: he completely blackened the surface with litho crayon and tusche; then, using a razor blade, he scratched away patches of dark to modulate lighter tones and highlights. His technique created challenges for master printer George C. Miller, who nonetheless realized even the most subtle details in each impression of the print.

  Riggs first displayed this lithograph at the Philadelphia Print Club's annual exhibition in 1935; it won a prize at their 1937 show. This print was also exhibited at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art in 1938 and, one year later, at the New York World's Fair exhibition of American art. 

On Process: The American Print, Technique Examined, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 2, 2001.

The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940 (Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains 1840–1940), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–May 25, 2003; Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 8–August 17, 2003. [exh. cat.]

Bassham, Ben. The Lithographs of Robert Riggs With a Catalogue Raisonné. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Art Alliance Press, 1986. No. 55, pp. 82–83.

Gustafson, Donna. Images from the World Between: The Circus in 20th Century American Art. (exh. cat., American Federation of Arts). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001. Fig. no. 69.

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text pp. 24, 29 (checklist); fig. 12, p. 24 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text pp. 24, 29 (checklist); fig. 12, p. 24 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]