Versailles, Coin de Parc
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 21.7 × 17.7 cm (8 9/16 × 7 in.); Paper: 21.8 × 17.9 cm (8 5/8 × 7 1/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124148
Art Historical Context
Step into the timeless gardens of Versailles through *Versailles, Coin de Parc (1904), a albumen print by Eugène Atget. Capturing a quiet corner of the palace's expansive park, this image exemplifies Atget's lifelong mission to document the fading architectural and natural beauty of France. Working in the early 20th century, Atget roamed Paris and its suburbs with his large-format camera, preserving scenes threatened by rapid urbanization. Here, the neatly clipped hedges, gravel paths, and shadowed statues evoke the grandeur of Louis XIV's opulent estate, yet Atget's lens renders it intimate a...
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...