A House in Smyrna
Medium
Soft-ground etching with roulette on wove paper
Dimensions
Plate: 7 11/16 × 11 7/16 in. (19.5 × 29 cm) Sheet: 10 13/16 × 12 13/16 in. (27.4 × 32.6 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1961
Accession Number
61.590.41
Art Historical Context
A House in Smyrna, created in 1839 by French artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, offers a quiet view of domestic architecture in the bustling port city then known as Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey). The work reflects the strong 19th-century European interest in scenes from the Eastern Mediterranean, where artists recorded buildings, light, and daily surroundings with a sense of discovery and romantic detail. Decamps rendered the image as a soft-ground etching with roulette on wove paper, a technique prized for its ability to mimic the soft, grainy textures of drawings or chalk. This medium a...
About the Artist
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps · 1803–1860
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