Clown in their fundamentally threatening or frightening nature. There are different types of clowns portrayed around the world. They include The classical pairing of the White Clown with Auguste in modern tradition has a precedent in the pairing of Pierrot and Harlequin in the Commedia dell'arte. Originally, Harlequin's role was that of a light-hearted, nimble and astute servant, paired with the sterner and melancholic Pierrot. In the 18th-century English Harlequinade, Harlequin was now paired with Clown. As developed by Joseph Grimaldi around 1800, Clown became the mischievous and brutish foil for the more sophisticated Harlequin, who became more of a romantic
Pierrot The Naturalists—Émile Zola especially, who wrote glowingly of them—were captivated by their art. Edmond de Goncourt modeled his acrobat-mimes in his "The Zemganno Brothers" (1879) upon them; J.-K. Huysmans (whose "Against Nature" [1884] would become Dorian Gray's bible) and his friend Léon Hennique wrote their pantomime "" (1881) after seeing them perform at the Folies Bergère. (And, in turn, Jules Laforgue wrote his pantomime "Pierrot the Cut-Up" ["Pierrot fumiste", 1882] after reading the scenario by Huysmans and Hennique.) It was in part through the enthusiasm that they excited, coupled with the Impressionists’ taste for popular entertainment, like the circus and