Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève (1898): Art, History and Details

Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève (1898) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Eugène Atget became a photographer in the 1890s. His goal, like that of Charles Marville decades before, was to document the old buildings and streets of Paris before they were demolished. This narrow street, the site of the founding of the University of Paris in 1112, ends in a church built in the 1600s. Atget sold his photographs not as art but as “documents for artists,” similar in purpose to the nude studies other photographers made for use by painters. That may be why he photographed early in the morning, when a normally bustling street like this one was empty.

Object facts

• Title: Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève
• Date: 1898
• Creator attribution: Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927)
• Culture: France, 20th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print, gold toned
• Dimensions: Image: 22 x 17.4 cm (8 11/16 x 6 7/8 in.); Matted: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1985.115

A detail from the museum

Eugène Atget's goal as a photographer was to document the old buildings and streets of Paris before they were demolished.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.