Shopfront from 3, quai de Bourbon, Île Saint-Louis, Paris

Etienne Séjournant

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This Parisian shopfront, from the north bank of the Ile Saint-Louis, stood on a site favorable to commerce, close to the junction of the Quai Bourbon and the Pont Marie, an early seventeenth-century bridge over the Seine. It was superimposed on the masonry of an existing seventeenth-century building, the modest outlines of which can still be seen. Chroniclers of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Paris drew attention to the charm and rarity of this isolated little shopfront, which was thought to be the only surviving eighteenth-century example in the city. By the time it was dismantled in World War I, the original painted surface had weathered to the bare oak and the woodwork had suffered some losses. When the shopfront was restored at the Museum, the natural tone of the wood was retained. The missing elements were supplied in accordance with a measured drawing of the shopfront published in 1870.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art