Silverpoint

Lineage of Forrest · French · 1821 to 1868

Charles Meryon

A colour-blind naval officer who etched Paris as if it were carved from one dark stone.

Meryon left the French navy, discovered he was colour-blind, and turned to etching. Between 1850 and 1854 he produced the Eaux-fortes sur Paris: the apse of Notre-Dame seen across the Seine, the Petit Pont, the Pompe Notre-Dame, the gargoyle Le Stryge, the Pont-au-Change. Baudelaire and Victor Hugo recognised them at once. He died in the asylum at Charenton.

For an architectural draughtsman he is the standard for tone built from line. His skies are ruled horizontals, his stone is layered cross-hatching counted to the exact value, his reflections are vertical strokes broken by a few horizontals, and his cathedral is a silhouette first and a building second. Everything the Line unit of this course teaches can be checked against a Meryon.

The Apse of Notre-Dame, Paris, Meryon, 1854
Art Institute of Chicago

Meryon, The Apse of Notre-Dame, Paris, 1854. Etching and drypoint ivory laid paper.

The Art Institute of Chicago · Clarence Buckingham Collection

What to steal

  1. 1Counted tone: each shadow is a known number of hatch layers, and the darkest sits beside the lightest paper.
  2. 2Architecture as silhouette: the skyline of Notre-Dame reads before one buttress does.
  3. 3Reflections: vertical, a half-step darker, broken by three horizontals.

How to look

  • Half-close your eyes until the lines vanish. Count the values that remain. Then open them and count the layers that made each one.
  • Follow the eye level across the Apse print: the bridge, the quay and the figures all confirm it.
  • Find the one place where the deepest black touches untouched paper. That is the focal point.

Works

12 public-domain