Porte Saint-Denis 1928

0:00

print, etching

print

etching

cityscape

realism

Dimensions: 19 7/8 x 23 11/16 in. (50.48 x 60.17 cm) (image)20 15/16 x 24 7/16 in. (53.18 x 62.07 cm) (sight)32 3/4 x 38 1/2 in. (83.19 x 97.79 cm) (outer frame)

Jules de Bruycker made this etching of the Porte Saint-Denis at an unknown date. Look how he's built this image through tiny, almost frantic, marks, a real dance of the needle. I love the way the ink creates a world of shadowy contrasts, the whole image feels like it's emerging from a dream. De Bruycker hasn’t smoothed anything out, he’s reveled in the gritty details. Take a look at the lower left corner, there’s a dark mass of tangled lines which slowly resolves into a crowded street scene. You can almost feel the weight of history bearing down on the figures. It's like Daumier met Piranesi in a back alley of Paris, all rendered with this obsessive, almost manic energy. This piece reminds us that art is never really finished, it's always becoming.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

⋮

Jules de Bruycker was a Belgian painter, draftsman, and printmaker noted for his highly detailed drawings, watercolors, and prints documenting the lives of the working class and urban poor, especially those living in the older sections of his home city of Ghent. In the present example, De Bruycker portrays the Gate of St. Denis, a seventeenth-century triumphal arch built for King Louis XIV, as it appeared in 1928. Though the triumphal arch dominates the composition, the artist included many details of the surrounding Paris streetscape, including the hodge-podge of shops and crowds of people going about their daily lives in the shadow of the grand monument.