Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"

Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"

Charles Meryon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

It seems likely that the poet Charles Baudelaire had this print in mind in 1859 when he admired "the majesty of accumulated stone" in Meryon’s work juxtaposed with "obelisks of industry, spewing forth . . . conglomerations of smoke" and "prodigious scaffolding of monuments under repair" that overlaid an "openwork architecture of a paradoxical beauty" upon the city. The seventeenth-century Pont-Neuf—the oldest surviving bridge in Paris at the time—was one such monument undergoing extensive renovation when Meryon made this print.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"Pont-Neuf, Paris, from "Etchings of Paris"

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.