Hotel Beauvais, 68 rue François Miron

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Hotel Beauvais, 68 rue François Miron

Artist Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)

Dateabout 1910

DimensionsOverall: 8 7/16 x 7 in. (21.4 x 17.8 cm)

MediumAlbumen print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1993.12

Not on View

Collections

Works on Paper

Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Past and Present: Photographs from the Permanent Collection, Jan 22 - June 8, 1999 (no cat.)

Toledo Museum of Art, Refraction/Reflection, April 20-September 2, 2012.

Label TextAndré Calmette, a life-long friend of Eugène Atget, wrote, “Atget had the ambition to create a collection of all that which both in Paris and its surroundings was artistic and picturesque.” Atget was a documentarian whose vision was poetic and whose technique was virtuosic. During his lifetime his photographs sold for very little mostly to artists, illustrators, and architects who used them as inspiration for their own designs. On the occasion of his images being published by Man Ray in La Révolution Surréaliste, Atget insisted that he remain anonymous. In this print, brilliant light reflecting against the columns and walls of an interior stairwell of the Hotel Beauvais creates strong vertical and diagonal lines that occupy the viewer’s eye and frame the sculptural frieze containing sphinx-like creatures.