Versailles

1924–25

Not on view

From 1898 until his death in 1927, Atget exhaustively documented the remains of Old Paris: the city’s streets, monuments, interiors, and environs. Among the last entries in this self-directed preservationist effort was a series of images of landscapes and sculpture in the parks of Saint-Cloud and Versailles. Here, the photographer records a statue of a sleeping Ariadne, the mythical Cretan princess abandoned by her lover Theseus on the island of Naxos. Atget’s simultaneously realistic and otherworldly photographs inspired the Surrealist artist Man Ray, who reproduced four of them in a 1926 issue of the journal La Révolution Surréaliste, thus presenting the elder photographer as a modernist forerunner.

Artwork Details

Object Information

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Exhibition History

Title: Versailles
Artist: Eugène Atget (French, Libourne 1857–1927 Paris)
Date: 1924–25
Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions: Image: 17.5 x 21.9 cm (6 7/8 x 8 5/8 in.)
Sheet: 18 × 21.9 cm (7 1/16 × 8 5/8 in.)
Mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005
Object Number: 2005.100.512
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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Versailles, France, Eugène Atget French, Albumen silver print from glass negative — Versailles, France
Eugène Atget
1923

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1856

[The Great Wave, Sète], Gustave Le Gray French, Albumen silver print from glass negative — [The Great Wave, Sète]
Gustave Le Gray
1857

15, rue Maître-Albert, Eugène Atget French, Gelatin silver print from glass negative — 15, rue Maître-Albert
Eugène Atget
1912

Violin or Viola Bow, Brazilwood, other materials, French — Violin or Viola Bow
French
late 19th or early 20th century

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