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[[File:Léon Hennique - Pierrot sceptique.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Jules Chéret]]: Title-page of Hennique and [[J.-K. Huysmans|Huysmans]]' ''Pierrot the Skeptic'', 1881]]
[[File:Paul Cézanne, 1888, Mardi gras (Pierrot et Arlequin), oil on canvas, 102 x 81 cm, Pushkin Museum.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Paul Cézanne]]: ''Mardi gras (Pierrot and Harlequin)'', 1888, [[Pushkin Museum]], Moscow]]
In the 1880s and 1890s, the pantomime reached a kind of apogee, and Pierrot became ubiquitous.<ref>On late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century French pantomime, see Bonnet, ''La pantomime noire'' and ''Pantomimes fin-de-siècle''; Martinez; Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 253–315; and Rolfe, pp. 143–58.</ref> Moreover, he acquired a counterpart, Pierrette, who rivaled Columbine for his affections. (She seems to have been especially endearing to [[Xavier Privas]], hailed in 1899 as the "prince of songwriters": several of his songs ["Pierrette Is Dead", "Pierrette's Christmas"] are devoted to her fortunes.) A [[Cercle Funambulesque]] was founded in 1888, and Pierrot (sometimes played by female mimes, such as [[Félicia Mallet]]) dominated its productions until its demise in 1898.<ref>See Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 284–294.</ref> [[Sarah Bernhardt]] even donned Pierrot's blouse for [[Jean Richepin]]'s ''Pierrot the Murderer'' (1883).
But French mimes and actors were not the only figures responsible for Pierrot's ubiquity: the English Hanlon brothers (sometimes called the [[Hanlon-Lees]]), gymnasts and acrobats who had been schooled in the 1860s in pantomimes from Baptiste's repertoire, traveled (and dazzled) the world well into the twentieth century with their pantomimic sketches and extravaganzas featuring riotously nightmarish Pierrots. The [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalists]]—[[Émile Zola]] especially, who wrote glowingly of them—were captivated by their art.<ref>See Cosdon, p.49.</ref> [[Edmond de Goncourt]] modeled his acrobat-mimes in his ''The Zemganno Brothers'' (1879) upon them; [[J.-K. Huysmans]] (whose ''[[À rebours|Against Nature]]'' [1884] would become [[The Picture of Dorian Gray|Dorian Gray]]'s bible) and his friend [[Léon Hennique]] wrote their pantomime ''[[s:fr:Pierrot sceptique (pantomime)|Pierrot the Skeptic]]'' (1881) after seeing them perform at the Folies Bergère. (And, in turn, [[Jules Laforgue]] wrote his pantomime ''Pierrot the Cut-Up'' [''Pierrot fumiste'', 1882]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.laforgue.org/Pierrot.htm|title=Pierrot fumiste (Jules Laforgue)|website=www.laforgue.org|access-date=2016-07-05}}</ref> after reading the scenario by Huysmans and Hennique.)<ref>On the influence of the Hanlons on Goncourt and Huysmans and Hennique, see Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 182–188, 217–222; on the influence of Huysmans/Hennique on Laforgue's pantomime, see Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', p. 145, 154.</ref> It was in part through the enthusiasm that they excited, coupled with the [[Impressionism|Impressionists]]’ taste for popular entertainment, like the circus and the music-hall, as well as the new bohemianism that then reigned in artistic quarters like [[Montmartre]] (and which was celebrated by such denizens as [[Adolphe Willette]], whose cartoons and canvases are crowded with Pierrots)—it was through all this that Pierrot achieved almost unprecedented currency and visibility towards the end of the century.
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