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The young Walter Sickert worked in James McNeill Whistler’s studio, even couriering Whistler’s paintings to France for exhibition in the Paris salons. In 1883, Sickert carried a letter from Whistler to Edgar Degas, who befriended the young painter. Degas’s advice and example would have a lifelong impact on Sickert. Degas encouraged Sickert to paint in places of popular entertainment, such as music halls, circuses, and at the ballet, and his influence is apparent in this daring depiction of a trapeze artist performing at the Cirque Rancy in Dieppe. Degas died in 1917, raising the possibility that this was intended as an homage, evoking Degas’s own exploration of the theme in his earlier paintings of the trapeze artist Miss La La in the Cirque Fernando.