The Notre-Dame Pump, Paris

Charles Meryon

1852 · Etching; sixth state of ten · Drawings and Prints

The demolition of the water pump on the Notre-Dame bridge, ordered by the Paris municipal government in 1851, encouraged Meryon to select the old structure as a subject for his etching the following year. As part of the plan instituted by Emperor Napoleon III to improve city infrastructure, the water supply system was overhauled, rendering this seventeenth-century pump defunct. Meryon wrote in 1853 of his regret for its destruction, because the pump had been an "unusual and curious thing" in a city that was becoming "more and more regular."

Artist

Charles Meryon

Date

1852

Medium

Etching; sixth state of ten

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929