TriArte - Le Stryge

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Bookmark: http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/175551

Charles Meryon
French (1821 - 1868) Primary

Le Stryge

1854

Etching

Plate
6 5/8 in. x 5 1/8 in. (16.9 cm x 13 cm)

Bequest of M. Carey Thomas, President of Bryn Mawr College, 1894-1922

Bryn Mawr College

Accession Number: 1935.10

Deanery.231 (Deanery Number)

Geography:

Europe, France

Classification:

Fine and Visual Arts; Prints; Etchings

Culture/Nationality: French

Collection: Deanery Collection

Charles Meryon (1821-1868) was born in Paris, the son of a travelling English physician and a dancer at a Parisian opera house. After spending a few years in the French navy, he returned to Paris and began painting lessons. Meryon was born color-blind, however, a condition which disrupted his painting career and led him to study etching at the studio of Alexandre Bléry.

Meryon also suffered from mental illness throughout his life. His familiarity with poverty and melancholy shaped his artistic vision, and over the course of four years (1850-1854) he produced a series of twenty-two haunting and imaginative views of the streets, buildings, and bridges of Paris called "Eaux-fortes sur Paris."

"Le Stryge," or The Vampire, depicts a gargoyle on the Notre Dame Cathedral overlooking the streets of Paris. Standing prominently in the background is the Tour Saint-Jacques, the tower of a sixteenth-century church that was destroyed shortly after the French Revolution. This etching hung in the Blue Room of the Deanery along with other prints from the same series and etchings of the American artist, James McNeill Whistler.

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etchings

Prints made from an etched printing plate, which is a metal plate on which a design is made by coating the plate with an acid-resistant substance, creating a design in the coating, and then exposing the plate to acid, which etches the plate where the metal is exposed. For designs incised directly into a copper plate using a burin or graver, use "engravings (prints)."

Bibliography List

The following Bibliography exist for this object:

Manufacturers' Appraisal Company, 1949 Manufacturers' Appraisal. 1949
Page Number: 68
Manufacturers' Appraisal Company, 1954 Manufacturers' Appraisal. 1954
Page Number: 92

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This object is a member of the following portfolios:

Deanery Collection

If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=BMC>cite web |url=http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/175551 |title=Le Stryge |author=Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections |accessdate=8/7/2020 |publisher=Bryn Mawr College</ref>

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