Fountain at St. Sulpice
1851
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 20.7 × 15.8 cm (8 3/16 × 6 1/4 in.); First mount: 21.8 × 16.7 cm (8 5/8 × 6 5/8 in.); Second mount: 49.4 × 39.3 cm (19 1/2 × 15 1/2 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
209683
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Charles Marville is best known for his photographs of Paris at a time of enormous change, documenting its transformation from a dark, crowded city into one of grand boulevards and public parks. This picture, made in the year Marville began taking photographs, shows the monumental fountain just outside the church of Saint-Sulpice, which had been completed only a few years earlier. Marville produced his negative on paper, which lends the image a grainy softness that many photographers in his day p...
About the Artist
Charles Marville · 1813–1879
**Charles Marville**, born Charles François Bossu on July 17, 1813, in Paris, adopted his professional pseudonym around 1832 to avoid the stigma of "bossu," meaning hunchback in French. Trained as a painter, engraver, and illustrator, he spent nearly two decades producing woodblock illustrations for books and magazines before embracing photography around 1850. His transition coincided with the med...