At the Fortifications, Porte de Versailles
Medium
etching
Dimensions
image: 11.9 × 23.4 cm · sheet: 19 × 28.8 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Ralph King
Accession Number
1920.635
Tags
male
About this artwork
Paris underwent a dramatic redesign beginning in the mid-1800s, resulting in its distinctive appearance today but also in the displacement of residents who worked—but could not afford to live—in the city. In this print, Auguste Lepère presented the “zone,” an area on Paris’s periphery where its most economically disadvantaged and disenfranchised inhabitants lived, including some laundresses. Lepère’s image features a laundry line as the singular domestic touch within an otherwise surreal landsca...