Prints and Authors in the Time of Manet

Portrait of Charles Meryon

Etching, 1853
Museum purchase, 1936.79

This image was used for Charles Meryon’s set of prints and verse Etchings on Paris (Eaux-fortes sur Paris), 1852. It was Meryon’s first suite of etchings. In its intended form, the suite was to have contained 12 large views and 10 small prints of verse and incidental items. Writer Victor Hugo’s Hugo’s Nôtre-Dame de Paris, or The Hunchback of Nôtre-Dame, provided several specific passages that Meryon used as inspiration for his Paris etchings.