Fountain at St. Sulpice

Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)

1851

Medium
Salted paper print
Classification
Photograph
Dimensions
Image/paper: 20.7 × 15.8 cm (8 3/16 × 6 1/4 in.); First mount: 21.8 × 16.7 cm (8 5/8 × 6 5/8 in.); Second mount: 49.4 × 39.3 cm (19 1/2 × 15 1/2 in.)
Culture
France
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media
Credit line
Mary and Leigh Block and Nagel Family Funds
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed

View at the Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

Charles Marville is best known for his photographs of Paris at a time of enormous change, documenting its transformation from a dark, crowded city into one of grand boulevards and public parks. This picture, made in the year Marville began taking photographs, shows the monumental fountain just outside the church of Saint-Sulpice, which had been completed only a few years earlier. Marville produced his negative on paper, which lends the image a grainy softness that many photographers in his day prized over the sharper quality found in metal-plate daguerreotypes and glass negatives.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0