Versailles, Cour de Marbre, Fontaine
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 22.2 × 17.5 cm (8 3/4 × 6 15/16 in.); Paper: 22.2 × 18 cm (8 3/4 × 7 1/8 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124234
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-dappled Marble Court (Cour de Marbre) the Palace of Versailles through Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget's 1903 photograph. Atget, a pioneering French photographer (1857–1927), dedicated his career to meticulously documenting the architecture, streets, and gardens of Paris and its historic environs at the turn of the th century. This image captures the elegant fountain amid the court's ornate marble facade, preserving a moment of grandeur just as urbanization threatened such timeless scenes. Printed as an albumen silver print—a 19th-century process prized for its rich tonal depth an...
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...