Saint-Sulpice
Eugène Atget
French, 1857–1927
Avril 1926
A gelatin silver printing-out-paper photograph by Eugène Atget that quietly documents the square before Saint-Sulpice, aiming to record Paris’s architecture and the everyday atmosphere of the city in the 1920s.
The image’s quiet melancholy is immediate: leafless trees and empty benches frame an ornate fountain and the classical church facade, their forms softened by muted tonalities and wet pavement reflections.
Atget’s calm, methodical pictures helped define modern documentary photography by preserving a vanishing Paris and shaping how later photographers and artists saw urban life.
Medium
Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print
Dimensions
Approx. 7 1/16 × 8 9/16" (18 × 21.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Abbott-Levy Collection. Acquired through the generosity of Shirley C. Burden, and Family of Man Fund
Accession
1.1969.2524
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
