Marchand abat-jours
1899/1900
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 23 × 17.6 cm (9 1/16 × 6 15/16 in.); Paper: 23 × 17.7 cm (9 1/16 × 7 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
70742
Art Historical Context
Welcome to the photography galleries, where we encounter *Marchand abat-jours* (Lampshade Merchant), captivating albumen silver print by Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget from around 1899–1900. Atget, a pioneering French photographer, obsessively documented the streets, shops, and daily life of Paris in the late 19th early 20th centuries. This intimate image likely captures a modest storefront or vendor specializing in abat-jours—delicate fabric lampshades that illuminated Parisian homes—offering a poignant glimpse into the city's vanishing artisanal trades amid rapid modernization. The albumen print...
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...