The Notre-Dame pump
(La Pompe Notre Dame)
1852
from the Etchings of Paris (Eaux-Fortes sur Paris) series (1852–54)
- Medium
- etching and drypoint
- Measurements
- 17.2 × 25.2 cm (plate) 25.4 × 33.0 cm (sheet)
- Catalogue/s Raisonné
- Schneiderman 26 VI
- Edition
- 7th of 10 states
- Departments
- International Prints / International Prints and Drawings
- Credit Line
- Gift of Jacobus Francis van Breda and Helen Mary Cooley through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2024
- Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
A large part of Paris’s water supply was taken from the river Seine using an outmoded pump located on the Île de la Cité, or City Island. Baron Haussmann’s public works program called for alternative sources that would make the picturesque structure redundant. Built on stilts in about 1670, the building was condemned by the time Charles Meryon made this plate, and later demolished in 1858. The perspective on the pump is from the river and includes the twin towers of Notre-Dame behind the embankment housing. Meryon allowed himself this artistic licence, believing it reflected the way ‘the mind works as soon as actual objects which have arrested its attention have disappeared from sight’.