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for CHARLES MERYON
CHARLES MERYON
1821-1868
(1821-1868).
French etcher. Meryon was born in Paris, the illegitimate son of an English doctor and a French dancer; his early career was spent as a French naval officer. His considerable reputation rests on a series of views of Paris which he began to etch and publish from c.1850. All are executed with great refinement of drawing and strong chiaroscuro reminiscent of Piranesi, but whereas some are straightforward views of city buildings, like The Clock Tower (1852; London, V&A), many have macabre overtones. The Morgue (1854; London, V&A), which seems initially to be an objective portrayal of a Parisian institution, shows, on closer examination, an idle prurient crowd watching the arrival of a naked cadaver under the supervision of a gendarme. It may have been this morbid element which so appealed to Baudelaire who described him, aptly, as 'a strange but stalwart man' ('Salon o 1859', Revue française). Some etchings contain elements of fantasy which are symptomatic of Meryon's own disturbed mental state; probably schizophrenic, he spent his last two years in an asylum, convinced that he was God.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schneiderman, R., Charles Meryon: The Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints (1990).
David Rodgers
© Oxford University Press 2007
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