A Monday, Entry into Prés-Saint-Gervais
Medium
Etching on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 13 × 12.1 cm (5 1/8 × 4 13/16 in.); Sheet: 15.6 × 21.3 cm (6 3/16 × 8 7/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
46306
Art Historical Context
**A Monday, Entry into Prés-Gervais** (1893) is a delicate etching by French artist Louis Auguste Lepère, master printmaker celebrated for his intimate portrayals of Parisian life. Created on cream laid paper, this small-scale work—measuring just 13 ×12.1 cm—captures the everyday rhythm of workers streaming into the working-class suburb of Le Pré-Saint-Gervais on a typical Monday morning. During the Belle Époque, as Paris industrialized, such scenes highlighted the city's expanding urban fringes, where factories and commuters blurred the line between countryside and metropolis. Lepère's etchi...
About the Artist
Louis Auguste Lepère · 1849–1918
Louis-Auguste Lepère (1849–1918) was born in Paris on November 30 to the sculptor François Lepère, immersing him early in the artistic world. At age thirteen, he apprenticed in the studio of the English wood engraver Joseph Burn-Smeeton, training there from 1862 to 1867, and later attended drawing courses under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran at the Petite École (now École nationale supérieure des art...