Versailles, Fountain of Triumphant France (1904): Art, History and Details

Versailles, Fountain of Triumphant France (1904) 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:

From 1901 until his death in 1927, Atget devoted much of his time to documenting châteaus and parks in and around Paris. Initially and most frequently, he was attracted to the gardens of Versailles, first working there until 1906. This intriguing detail of the Fountain of Triumphant France isolates two of its three allegorical figures: the seated representation of the French Empire behind Jean-Baptiste Tubi’s sculpture denoting Spain. The fountain was commissioned by Louis XIV to celebrate the French victory over Spain and Holland. The sharply focused composition filled with decorative and sculptural details is typical of Atget’s early photographs, which he understood to be "documents for artists"—raw material for painters, sculptors, stage designers, and craftsmen.

Object facts

• Title: Versailles, Fountain of Triumphant France
• Date: 1904
• Creator attribution: Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927)
• Culture: France, 20th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print, gold toned
• Dimensions: Image: 22 x 18.2 cm (8 11/16 x 7 3/16 in.); Matted: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1985.114

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.