Fountain at St. Sulpice

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Charles Marville is best known for his photographs of Paris at a time of enormous change, documenting its transformation from a dark, crowded city into one of grand boulevards and public parks. This picture, made in the year Marville began taking photographs, shows the monumental fountain just outside the church of Saint-Sulpice, which had been completed only a few years earlier. Marville produced his negative on paper, which lends the image a grainy softness that many photographers in his day prized over the sharper quality found in metal-plate daguerreotypes and glass negatives.

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