The first works illustrating public entertainers and clowns appeared during the Saint-Denis period, that corresponding to his internment in France at the Saint-Denis prison during the German occupation of the 1940s. He returned to France in 1947 and obtained several exhibitions including this one, in 1949 at the Gentilhommière gallery in Paris. He was the first Canadian painter to see one of these works acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1951. This still-life work with a yellow bottle is part of a period where the painter explored this subject of still life, such as Georges Braque before him. It was at the beginning of the 1950s that Beaulieu returned in force to human representation and again chose the subjects of street performers, acrobats and clowns.

The work Gitane and Acrobat made in gouache and watercolour is a preparatory work for an oil canvas from 1954. Through this choice of subjects, the painter thus plunges back into his years of internment and liberation when he is in contact with his companions in misfortune.