The Mortuary, Paris (La Morgue)
1854
Step into the gritty underbelly of 1854 Paris with Charles Meryon’s etching of the city’s infamous public morgue. Towering, smoke-belching buildings loom over a quay where spectators line the walls, treating the retrieval of bodies from the Seine as a daily spectator sport. Down below, amidst the laundry and shadows, a lone figure seems to dance or gesture wildly—a surreal touch from Meryon, who was known for his obsessive, almost hallucinatory attention to architectural detail. Despite being colorblind, Meryon used these black-and-white lines to create a version of Paris that is far more atmospheric and haunting than a photograph.
- Technique
- Etching
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