Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
Charles Meryon is remembered for preserving disappearing views of medieval Paris with a remarkable attention to detail. Born Charles Chaspoux in 1821, he was raised in a working-class neighborhood by his grandmother and mother, a dancer at the Paris Opera. In 1824 English physician Charles Lewis Meryon acknowledged him as his son and they corresponded by mail. In 1837 the young Charles took on his father’s surname.
The naval academy in Brest gave Meryon an introduction to drawing, providing him with the skills for meticulous renderings. He recorded his naval journeys around the world. When he returned to Paris on leave, he received classical art training through study with a pupil of neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David.
After the French Revolution of 1848 Meryon left the Navy and focused on his art full-time. That year he exhibited a large-scale drawing at the prestigious Paris Salon. Meeting with landscape printmaker Eugène Bléry led to instruction in etching over two years. His earliest works were reproductive prints of Old Masters. The artist that resonated with him was 17th century Dutch printmaker Reynier Nooms, called Zeeman, known for his highly detailed maritime and topographical etchings.
Meryon is best known for his series of etchings and verses: Eaux-fortes sur Paris (Etchings in Paris). Art critic Philippe Burty stated that his friend was inspired to make the prints by the copies he made of Zeeman’s work, and Meryon added a dedication to the Dutch artist. Through his early experiences in watercolor Meryon discovered he had difficulty reading color; therefore, some attribute his color vision deficiency to his preference for etching, in which he could easily discern gradations in tone.
He made numerous images of the same architectural structures taken from different perspectives around the center of Paris, primarily the Île de la Cité, not more than a 20-minute walk from his home. The location dates to Roman times. The iconic Notre Dame de Paris was sacred as a cathedral and especially beloved by the people living in the area. The mid-19th century saw a renewed interest in the country’s medieval heritage; Victor Hugo published Notre-Dame Paris (aka The Hunchback of Notre Dame) in 1831, inspiring calls for preservation of the Gothic cathedral. The restoration of Notre Dame was overseen by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who proclaimed Gothic France’s national style.
Up until this point, Paris’s winding, narrow streets had changed little from medieval times. Some saw the working-class Île de la Cité as a dirty, unhealthy, crime-filled area and a locus of revolutionary activity. By 1850, when Meryon began his print series, France had weathered three revolutions in 1789, 1830, and 1848.
President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (later Emperor Napoléon III) envisioned a more modern city. He and the prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, masterminded an urban redevelopment plan that extended from 1853 to 1870. To make the transformation a reality they razed buildings and displaced largely working-class residents. New public buildings and fashionable apartments, parks, streetlights, and especially broad, straight boulevards replaced over-crowded streets and ensured against future insurrections. Infrastructure improvements included modern sewers and a fresh water supply system.
In L’arche du Pont Notre Dame, Meryon’s view is unexpected with the vantage point from water level of the Seine. Rather than focusing on the bridge itself, Meryon directs our attention to boatmen and a man hanging down precariously at work. The underside of one of the bridge’s arches frames the wood pilings of the Le Pompe Notre-Dame (demolished in 1851). Further in the distance are the bridge Pont-au-Change and the Palais de Justice’s towers.
Meryon drew numerous sketches for L’arche du Pont Notre Dame that are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Historians believe that Meryon used a camera lucida for The Art Institute of Chicago’s study, a device which projected the subject onto paper, aiding in drawing the scene.
The Clark Art Institute’s work is a final drawing, and strongly resembles the etching. Meryon signed his name in reverse in ink; perhaps a technique to help him draw the mirror image on his copper plate. The artist worked out his composition with architecture and people, even determining the directional patterns for hatching. The drawing and etching demonstrate his love for painstaking detail; and yet, he often enlarged and shifted the perspective to suit his personal vision.
Meryon made some minor changes over multiple printed states; the FWMoA’s impression is the sixth. The artist enhanced what were faint shadows in the drawing and created dramatic contrasts of light and dark to bestow a haunting feeling. Black birds, possibly ravens, fly in the sky. French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire stated that Meryon admired Edgar Allan Poe, whose widely read work was first translated into French in 1840.
Meryon’s etchings of Paris recorded the changes impacting his beloved city and its working-class people. Some historians suggest they were a defiant reaction to urban renewal.
Meryon’s career was brief as he suffered from mental illness. His prints were not in high demand during his lifetime. Charles Baudelaire, however, held Meryon’s work in high regard and offered to compose poems to complement the Paris series, although this did not come to fruition. Victor Hugo was another admirer, and Meryon’s poetry was indebted to him. Artists such as American printmaker John Taylor Arms praised the work of Meryon and went on to create his own series of Gothic architectural etchings.
Want to see more prints from the Permanent Collection? Visit FWMoA Tuesday-Friday, 11am-3pm, to explore the Print & Drawing Study Center.