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
Rights
Public Domain
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 allowed him to suggest weathered stone, foliage, and shadow with subtle tonal richness, giving the modest-sized print an intimate, almost sketch-like quality despite its printed form. Today the sheet belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of drawings and prints. It stands as a fine example of how printmaking carried images of distant places to European audiences, shaping cultural perceptions through carefully observed architectural detail.
About the Artist
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps · 1803–1860
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