Charles Méryon

Charles Méryon (born November 23, 1821, Paris, France—died February 13, 1868, Saint-Maurice) was a French printmaker whose etchings romantically depicted the life and mood of mid-19th-century Paris.

Included among Méryon’s earliest works were drawings of the New Zealand coast that he executed while he was in the French navy. He subsequently employed these studies for etchings. Following his time in the navy, he entered the studio of Alexandre Bléry, who taught him the technique of etching, which, because of Méryon’s colour blindness, became the medium at which he was the most talented. He earned his living by doing hackwork, and for practice he made studies after Dutch etchers, such as Zeeman (Reinier Nooms) and Adriaan van de Velde. He then began the series Etchings of Paris, executed from 1850 to 1854; although Méryon always considered these plates as a set, they were never published as such. Besides these 22 etchings, Méryon produced about 70 others.

Although Méryon is considered a great master of etching, striking in his originality and modernity, he was appreciated by only a few contemporary artists and critics. His prints sold for almost nothing. His life was one of great disappointments and terrible hardships; he became subject to hallucinations, and, shortly after the completion of the Paris series, he was committed to the Charenton mental institution at Saint-Maurice. A partial recovery was effected, but he was returned to the asylum in 1867 and committed suicide a year later.

Méryon’s rendering of architecture is often visionary, and generally his figures are incidental, like those of a landscape painter. But sometimes, as in his The Morgue (1854), they tell a story or, as in La Rue des Mauvais-Garçons (1854), with the two women secretly conversing, at least suggest a narrative. The Apse of Notre Dame (1853–54), considered to be Méryon’s masterpiece, characterizes his great sensitivity to the effects of light and atmosphere.