Painted in the Divisionist style, the work employs pointillist dots of color (primarily violet-gray, blue-gray, orange, and green) and a play of lines governed by rules whose laws Seurat had studied.

[4] It depicts immobile figures outdoors under artificial lighting at the sideshow of the Circus Corvi at place de la Nation, a working-class quarter in eastern Paris.

[5] The golden section appears to govern its geometric structure,[6][7] though modern consensus among art historians is that Seurat never used this divine proportion in his work.

Rather, they correspond to basic mathematical divisions (simple ratios that appear to approximate the golden section), as noted by Seurat with citations from Charles Henry.

Apart from issues of chronological priority, however, Parade also distinguishes itself as Seurat's most mysterious painting, a brooding masterpiece that reveals its meaning reluctantly, a disarmingly simple geometrical schema that conceals a complex spatial arrangement...

[10] It had long been believed that Charles Henry's theories on the emotional and symbolic expression of lines, shapes and colors were at the root of Parade.

Though, it wasn't until the 1890 exhibition of Le Chahut (two year after the completion of Parade) that critics remarked on a connection between the work of Seurat and the theories of Henry.

The subjects appear to be ordinary middle and working class spectator's and performers, without caricature of the type produced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or 19th century satirists such as Paul Gavarni or Honoré Daumier.

[5] Mirroring Seurat's work, Rimbaud writes of the circus sideshow as a reflection of contemporary life: "their bantering or their terror lasts one minute, or whole months.

He saw it with this penetrating exactness of a gaze vacant of all direct understanding... Each figure seems to be so perfectly enclosed within its simplified contour, for, however precise and detailed Seurat is, his passion for geometricizing never deserts him—enclosed so completely, so shut off in its partition, that no other relation than a spatial and geometrical one is any longer possible.

[11] Though Parade de cirque was eclipsed by Les Poseuses at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants, several critics did mention the arduous and innovative lighting effects employed by Seurat.

Gustave Geffroy, following his commentary on Seurat's other entries at the Indépendants, wrote, "Parade de cirque, on the contrary, has little allure, a poverty of silhouette, a pallid appearance with awkward contrasts.

"[5] Gustave Kahn sympathetically stated, "In this research, new to him, into the effects of gas [lighting], M. Seurat perhaps may not arrive at the harmonious and seductive impression of Poseuses, but the effort was difficult and the qualities of the painter rest there."

Kahn's commentary on the work was similar following its 1892 exhibition in Brussels: "Parade de cirque is conceived in a note of hazy fairground light.

"[5][13] More recently, Meyer Schapiro wrote of Parade's "marvelous delicacy of tone, the uncountable variations within a narrow range, the vibrancy and soft luster, which make his canvases ... a joy to contemplate.

Henri-Edmond Cross, Paul Signac, along with Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, André Derain (of the younger generation) began to paint with large brushstrokes that could never blend in the eye of the observer, with pure bold colors (reds, blues, yellows, greens and magentas) "making them as free of the trammels of nature", writes Herbert, "as any painting then being done in Europe.

[15][16] Seurat had been the founder of Neo-Impressionism, its most innovative and fervent protagonist, and proved to be one of the most influential in the eyes of the emerging avant-garde; many of whom—such as Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, Gino Severini and Piet Mondrian—transited through a Neo-Impressionist phase, prior to their Fauve, Cubist or Futurist endeavors.