Eugène Delâtre, Business card of printmaker-printer Eugène Delâtre, 1900
Picturesque street scenes
While nineteenth-century Paris was being transformed into a network of wide boulevards, the originally rural Montmartre retained most of its steep and winding little streets, with the occasional windmill among the new buildings that were springing up.
The etcher and master printer Eugène Delâtre made this picturesque side of the district the recurring subject of his prints.
Pierre Bonnard, A Square in the Evening (Place le soir), 1899
Symbol of modern life
By contrast, most printmakers, were fascinated by the noise and bustle of urban life in this area populated in the daytime by labourers, artisans, and small shopkeepers, and taken over after dark by café and revellers, prostitutes, and petty criminals.
Montmartre offered them a perfect example of modern society, with its social diversity, entertainment, and free-and-easy morals.
Further reading
- Phillip Dennis Cate et al., The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant-Garde 1875-1905, New Brunswick 1996
- Richard Thomson et al., Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, Washington 2005
- Ingrid Pfeiffer, Max Hollein (ed.), Esprit Montmartre: Bohemian life in Paris around 1900, Frankfurt 2014