The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 24, 2025

Le Pont Neuf

1901

Auguste Louis Lepère

(French, 1849–1918)
France, early 20th Century
etching
Image: 17.1 x 31 cm (6 3/4 x 12 3/16 in.); Sheet: 22.5 x 33.9 cm (8 7/8 x 13 3/8 in.)
Gift of Elizabeth Carroll Shearer in memory of Robert Lundie Shearer 1987.190
Catalogue raisonné: Lotz-Brissonneau 124
Location: Not on view

Description

Like Charles Meryon, Auguste Lepère was known for etchings of Paris. This work shows how bateaux-lavoirs (wash boats) changed over the course of a half century, as dissatisfaction grew about their unsanitariness and unattractiveness. In contrast to Meryon’s hectic scenes—in which laundresses lean out of open windows and stretch lines of laundry along the river’s paved banks—the boats appear here as orderly and uniform structures, closed so that the women working within were not visible to passersby.
  • Alphonse Lotz-Brissonneau [1840–1921], Nantes
  • Salsbury, Britany. Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Reproduced: p. 138, no. 32
  • Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 8, 2023-January 14, 2024).
    The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988).
  • {{cite web|title=Le Pont Neuf|url=false|author=Auguste Louis Lepère|year=1901|access-date=24 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1987.190