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Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
CHARLES MERYON L'Arche du Pont Notre-Dame.
Etching and drypoint, 1853. 153x195 mm; 6x7 3/4 inches, wide margins. Fourth state (of 7), with the inscriptions in cursive. A very good, early impression.
Meryon (1821-1868) was a French artist who worked in Paris and is considered among the most significant and influential printmakers of the 19th century. He suffered from color blindness and devoted his practice almost entirely to etching. Meryon's series of 22 etchings Eaux-fortes sur Paris, to which the current work belongs, captured many Parisian landmarks and early neighborhoods before their destruction or refurbishment in the wake of Napoleon III's and Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann's 1850s-60s rebuilding of Paris.
Meryon worked incessantly as a printmaker and suffered frequent bouts of mental illness. He was first admitted to Charenton, a hospital for psychiatric patients, in 1858. Though he spent less than a year there, he was re-admitted to Charenton in 1866 and died of exhaustion and starvation in 1868. Schneiderman 28.
