San Francisco (D-W 73 IV/IV -B 22 - W 80 - S 55)

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San Francisco (D-W 73 IV/IV -B 22 - W 80 - S 55)

Artist Charles Meryon French, 1821-1868

Place of OriginFrance

Date1856

Dimensions9 15/16 × 39 1/8 in. (25.3 × 99.4 cm)

Mediumetching

ClassificationPrints

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1922.172

Not on View

Collections

Works on Paper

Published ReferencesDelteil, Loys; edited by Wright, Harold J. L. Catalogue raisonné of the etchings of Charles Meryon. New York, 1924, cat. no. 73. cf. Burke, James D. Charles Meryon Prints and Drawings, New Haven, 1974, pp. 100-103Exhibition HistoryBuildings Real and Ideal: Nov. 15, 2007 - Jan 27, 2008.

Toledo Museum of Art, Prints and Authors from the Time of Manet, September 13, 2012-January 13, 2013.

Label TextThis amazing panorama was commissioned by François-Alfred Pioche and Jules B. Bayerque, two French entrepreneurs in San Francisco whose business was real estate speculation. Allegorical figures of Abundance and Work flank portraits of the entrepreneurs over the title. This unusually large etching was intended to serve as a high-class souvenir of the Frenchmen’s adopted city. Meryon constructed this image using five daguerreotypes (a photographic process) taken on the site. He spent more than a year transposing the imagery for the master drawing and printing plates. The final drawing was a compilation of the five daguerreotypes and specific details, which were drawn separately. The etching marks the point when Meryon’s art began to trouble him increasingly. He wrote to his father of the anxiety this plate had caused him: “the day when I poured the treacherous [acid] on the plate, what emotion did I not feel! It was almost a question of life or death for me! At last, thanks to a kind and extraordinary fate, it must be agreed, the result seemed to surpass my expectations....However, for a moment, I was gravely upset...”