Etchings of Paris; Title page to the suite

Etchings of Paris; Title page to the suite

Charles Meryon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Charles Meryon was celebrated among artists and collectors alike during the nineteenth century for his etched depictions of Paris. These works combined a documentary eye on the French capital—which was then undergoing dramatic transformation from a medieval to distinctly modern city—with fantastic details that varied from the whimsical to the morbid. His first and best-known album, Eaux-fortes sur Paris, included twenty-two urban views inspired by the novels and poetry of Victor Hugo (1802–1885). This title page opened the series, and showed, as the art critic Philippe Burty described in his early monograph on Meryon, "a block of stone with fossils and moss imprints . . . symbolizing the physical foundations of Paris."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Etchings of Paris; Title page to the suiteEtchings of Paris; Title page to the suiteEtchings of Paris; Title page to the suiteEtchings of Paris; Title page to the suiteEtchings of Paris; Title page to the suite

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.