# Fountain at St. Sulpice

- By: Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)
- Date: 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
- Credit line: Mary and Leigh Block and Nagel Family Funds
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/209683)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/3af957f3-8d49-23d1-d17c-adc74187a1e5/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Kids profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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