Artwork Page for At the Fortifications, Porte de Versailles

Details / Information for At the Fortifications, Porte de Versailles

At the Fortifications, Porte de Versailles

1898

Auguste Louis Lepère

(French, 1849–1918)
Culture
France, 19th century
Medium
etching
Support
Measurements
Image: 11.9 x 23.4 cm (4 11/16 x 9 3/16 in.); Plate: 15 x 25.9 cm (5 7/8 x 10 3/16 in.); Sheet: 19 x 28.8 cm (7 1/2 x 11 5/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Ralph King 1920.635
Catalogue raisonné
Lotz-Brissonneau 110
State
II/II
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print

Description

Paris underwent a dramatic redesign beginning in the mid-1800s, resulting in its distinctive appearance today but also in the displacement of residents who worked—but could not afford to live—in the city. In this print, Auguste Lepère presented the “zone,” an area on Paris’s periphery where its most economically disadvantaged and disenfranchised inhabitants lived, including some laundresses. Lepère’s image features a laundry line as the singular domestic touch within an otherwise surreal landscape, part of the city but seemingly rural. The inhabitants of the zone used open land to construct makeshift homes without modern amenities, so that they could subsist on the low wages offered by their urban employment.
Horizontally oriented print in black ink on beige paper of a road winding through a hazy scene with people milling about. In the right foreground, a person hangs washing on a line, two more people standing in the empty field behind them. On the left, three more people move around the edges of a fence, behind which the dark silhouettes of buildings rise, made dark with heavy cross-hatch shading.

At the Fortifications, Porte de Versailles

1898

Auguste Louis Lepère

(French, 1849–1918)
France, 19th century

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