The Clown is an important subject in French art. The Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, had presented in 1980 a major exhibition Les Arts du Théâtre de Watteau à Fragonard. Loans to the exhibition were made by over fifty museums in France and abroad. Gilberte Martin-Méry, distinguished Chief Curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, organized the impressive exhibition and wrote the Foreword to the excellent catalogue. The catalogue states that the art of the eighteenth century in France is "strongly identified with the world of the theatre," ("profondément marqués par l'univers du théâtre").[2] Artists depicted actors, dancers, singers, musicians and popular characters of the commedia dell'arte, including Harlequin, Gilles, Pierrot, and Pulcinella. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, artists in France continued to depict imagery of the Clown, as did Roseman in Paris in the 1990's when he returned to the subject of the Clown, who had inspired him in his work two decades before at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.