The Petit Pont (1850): Art, History and Details

The Petit Pont (1850) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868).

The work and its context

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

Charles Meryon used etching—a technique that involves drawing on a printing plate with a needle’s point—to create minutely detailed images of Paris that imaginatively present recognizable sites. This print features bateaux-lavoirs (wash boats) on the Seine River, where laundresses could purchase a spot to do their washing. The boats appealed to Meryon, who was fascinated by Paris’s gradual transformation. Since they attracted crowds of working-class women, administrators considered the boats unsightly and unhygienic, repeatedly pushing them closer to the city’s outskirts until few remained by the end of the 1800s.

Object facts

• Title: The Petit Pont
• Date: 1850
• Creator attribution: Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching with engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 26.4 x 19.6 cm (10 3/8 x 7 11/16 in.); Image: 24.6 x 18.8 cm (9 11/16 x 7 3/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1953.10

A detail from the museum

Charles Meryon described this print as his first original etching.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Salsbury, Britany. Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.