Versailles, Vase par Cornu
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image: 21.5 × 17.8 cm (8 1/2 × 7 1/16 in.); Paper: 21.6 × 17.8 cm (8 9/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124334
Art Historical Context
Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget’s 1904 albumen print *Versailles, Vase par Cornu* captures a decorative stone vase designed by the 19th-century sculptor Cornu, set within the storied gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Working in the early 1900s, Atget systematically photographed the architecture, sculpture, and landscapes of Paris and its environs, creating an invaluable visual record of sites that were then beginning to change or fall into neglect. Atget employed the albumen silver process, which produces the warm, luminous tones seen in this print, to achieve both clarity and subtle atmospheric...
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...