Cabaret de l'Homme Armé, Rue des Blancs-Manteaux
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 22.1 × 17.4 cm (8 3/4 × 6 7/8 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
223184
Art Historical Context
Step into the shadowy allure of turn-of-the-century Paris with Jean-Eugène-Aug Atget's *Cabaret de l'Hommeé, Rue des Blanc-Manteaux* (1900). Atget, a pioneering French, dedicated his career to meticulously documenting the city's vanishing old quarters, capturing everyday facades and fleeting street life before widespread modernization erased them. This albumen print, measuring a intimate 22.1 × 17.4 cm, freezes a modest cabaret entrance on a narrow street in the Marais district, evoking the bohemian nightlife of the Belle Époque. The albumen printing process, popular in the 19th century, lend...
About the Artist
Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget · 1857–1927
Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget was born on February 12, 1857, in Libourne, France, to working-class parents—a carriage maker father who died in 1862 and a mother who passed away soon after, orphaning him at age six or seven. Raised by his maternal grandparents in Bordeaux, Atget briefly pursued a seafaring life before moving to Paris in the late 1870s to study acting at the Conservatoire d'art dramatiq...