Adolphe-Gustave Binet
1854-1897
Construction of the Eiffel Tower
1888
17 15/16 x 12 9/16 inches (456 X 319 mm)
Black fabricated chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolor, with white opaque watercolor, on blue wove paper altered to light brown.
2011.18
Purchased on the Lois and Walter C. Baker Fund.
Notes
The present sheet, dated 1888, depicts workers scaling a stairway to the upper level of the Eiffel Tower just one year before the monument was completed for the Exposition Universelle. Binet emphasizes the tower's overwhelming scale in the upper register of the sheet as one's eye becomes lost in the complex web of ladders and beams rendered in heavy strokes of black conté crayon. Light pierces the weblike steel structure, emphasizing the majestic view from within.
The inscription at the lower right corner indicates that Binet gave the sheet to his friend Louis de Fourcaud (1851-1914), an art historian and professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
The inscription at the lower right corner indicates that Binet gave the sheet to his friend Louis de Fourcaud (1851-1914), an art historian and professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed, signed and dated at lower right, in pen and brown ink, "à mon ami / Louis de Fourcaud / Adolphe Binet / 1888."
Associated names
Fourcaud, L. de (Louis), 1851-1914, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, former owner.
Bibliography
William Griswold et al., The World Observed: Five Centuries of Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp, New York, 2001, p. 126, no. 114.
Artist
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Catalog link
Department