Versailles, Le Parc
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 22 × 17.7 cm (8 11/16 × 7 in.); Paper: 22 × 18 cm (8 11/16 × 7 1/8 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124323
Art Historical Context
Step into the timeless elegance of Jean-Eugène-Augusteget's *Versailles, Le Parc* (1906), an exquisite albumen silver print capturing the sprawling gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Atget, a pioneering French photographer (1857–1927), devoted his career to documenting the fading grandeur of old Paris and its surroundings, often framing architectural wonders and landscapes with a stark, unadorned gaze. Here, the meticulously manicured paths, statues, and foliage of Versailles evoke the opulent legacy of Louis XIV, yet Atget's empty composition lends a haunting, almost dreamlike stillness, de...
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...