Versailles, Vase par Ballin
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 22.2 × 17.6 cm (8 3/4 × 6 15/16 in.); Paper: 22.2 × 17.9 cm (8 3/4 × 7 1/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124160
Art Historical Context
In 1905, renowned French photographer Eugène Atget captured *Versailles, Vase Ballin*, an exquisite albumen silver print now housed in the Art Institute Chicago's Photography and Media Department. Atget, a pioneer of documentary photography, meticulously recorded the fading elegance of old Paris and its legacies, including the opulent Palace of Versailles. image focuses on a finely crafted vase silversmith Jacques Ballin highlighting the intricate artistry of France's grand siècle amid the palace's lavish interiors. The photograph's subject evokes the splendor of Versailles, Louis XIV's iconi...
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...