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San Francisco (Primary Title)

Charles Meryon, French, 1821 - 1868 (Artist)

1855–1856
French
Prints
Works On Paper
Etching on steel printed in black ink on laid paper
European Art
Sheet: 9 1/8 × 39 13/16 in. (23.18 × 101.12 cm)
Plate: 9 × 39 1/2 in. (22.86 × 100.33 cm)
Image: 7 3/16 × 37 7/8 in. (18.26 × 96.2 cm)
2018.520
Not on view

Meryon’s view of this American city (a tour de force comparable to Wenceslaus Hollar’s The Long View of Prague, also in this exhibition) was based on a series of photographs. The realistic appearance of the final product proved troubling to the artist (already suffering from bouts of mental illness), who wrote the following: “At the time when I executed this print, I had the idea, to avoid the break in continuity that exists in the center, to represent there fire, with flames and smoke reaching towards the sky, and birds of prey whirling above; but rushed as I was,

I was not able to carry out the idea.”

Gift of Frank Raysor
Schneiderman 54 III/III; Delteil-Wright IV/IV
A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection,
VMFA, January 29 - May 22 2011
Schneiderman, Richard S. The Catalog Raisonné of the Prints of Charles Meryon. London: Garton & Co, 1990.
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC

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