Versailles, Bassin de Neptune
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 17.6 × 21.6 cm (6 15/16 × 8 9/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124303
Art Historical Context
Step into the opulent gardens of the Palace of Versailles through Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget's *Versailles, Bassin de Neptune* (1902), an albumen silver print that captures majestic Neptune Basin—a grand fountain honoring the Roman god of the sea, in the 17th century for Louis XIV's lavish estate. Atget, a French photographer (1857–1927), devoted his career to meticulously documenting Paris and its historic sites, preserving vanishing architectural treasures before modernization erased them. His straightforward, unmanipulated style—often called "documentary poetry"—transforms everyday scenes in...
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...