Versailles, Vase par Ballin
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 21.9 × 17.6 cm (8 5/8 × 6 15/16 in.); Paper: 21.9 × 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
124322
Art Historical Context
Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget created this 1903 albumen print as part of his extensive documentation of historic French sites. Titled *Versailles, Vase par Ballin*, the photograph captures a ornate vase designed by the 17th-century silversmith Claude Ballin, set within the grand gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Atget approached his subjects with quiet precision, recording architectural details and sculptural elements that were already fading from everyday view in the early twentieth century. The albumen silver print medium, prized for its rich tonal gradations and fine detail, was ideally sui...
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...