The Apse of Notre-Dame, Paris

Charles Meryon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Meryon was the first nineteenth-century French etcher to make the Parisian cityscape his primary focus. This is the final preparatory drawing that he made for an etching of the same title (29.107.103; 57.531.5; 67.630.25; 17.3.414), as part of his suite of twenty-two prints entitled "Eaux-fortes sur Paris" (Etching on Paris). With a precise graphite line, Meryon details all that compositional elements of his design and he remained faithful to it in translating the drawing to the etching plate. Executed approximately midway through a twenty-year restoration of Notre Dame, the work gives little indication of the renovation underway. It shows the cathedral as it looked prior to the completion of the spire in 1859.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art