TriArte - Le Pont au Change

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Bookmark: http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/179471

Charles Meryon
French (1821 - 1868) Primary

Le Pont au Change

1854

Plate
6 1/8 in. x 13 in. (15.49 cm x 33.02 cm)

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

Bryn Mawr College

Accession Number: 1935.4

Deanery.225 (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."

This view of the Pont au Change shows Meryon’s mastery of water and sky, two elements which, along with the architecture of the city, he rendered with both precision and imagination. It 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)."

Exhibition List

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Centennial Exhibition Bryn Mawr College , 5/1/1985 - 5/29/1985

Bibliography List

The following Bibliography exist for this object:

Manufacturers' Appraisal Company, 1949 Manufacturers' Appraisal. 1949
Page Number: 67
Manufacturers' Appraisal Company, 1954 Manufacturers' Appraisal. 1954
Page Number: 91

Portfolio List Click a portfolio name to view all the objects in that portfolio

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/179471 |title=Le Pont au Change |author=Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections |accessdate=8/7/2020 |publisher=Bryn Mawr College</ref>

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