Henri Rivière, Georges Auriol, and others
Les Trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel
1887-1901
Scroll
- Artist: Henri Rivière
- Designer: Georges Auriol
- Author (Prologue): Arsène Alexandre
- Printer/Publisher: Eugène Verneau
Les Trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel
1887-1901
Physical Qualities
Bound volume of color lithographs and text, Book: 232 × 293 × 20 mm. (9 1/8 × 11 9/16 × 13/16 in.)
Sheet: 270 x 225 mm. (10 5/8 x 8 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Purchased as the gift of Louis Berman, Glyndon, Maryland
Object Number
2001.290
"Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower" was inspired by the Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai’s series of 19th-century color woodcuts entitled "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji". With this elegant publication, Henri Rivière sought to equate the importance of the Eiffel Tower, a miracle of modern French industrial design completed in 1889, with the spiritual significance of Mount Fuji in Japan. Rivière’s inventive compositions not only document the construction of the tower—based in part on photographs he took from within the heights of the structure itself—but also reveal its impact on the cityscape of Paris. Each page shows the tower from a different vantage point—rooftops and boulevards, parks and bridges—in varying weather conditions and times of year.
Susan Schulman, New York
Toulouse-Lautrec: Master of the Moulin Rouge
Off the Shelf: Modern and Contemporary Artists' Books
Jay Fisher, 'New Acquisition: Rivière's Views of the Eiffel Tower on display in New On View,' BMA Today, May/June 2002, p. 7.
Baltimore Museum of Art. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014.
Fields, Armound, Henri Riviere, 1st edition, Salt Lake City: G.M.Smith with Peregrine Smith Books, 1983, page 77 Toudouze, Georges, Henri Riviere, peintre et imagier, Paris: Henri Floury, 1907, pages 164-165.
Signed: 3
Inscribed: PAGE FOUR: C: 'LES, TRENTE-SIX VUES DE LA TOUR EIFFEL'; RECTO PAGE FIVE: C: 'LES/ TRENTE-SIX VUES/DE LA /TOUR EIFFEL/PAR/ HENRI RIVIERE/ Prologue d'Arsene Alexandre/ [monogram with iris in circle]/ Imprimerie/ EUGENE VERNEAU/ 108, rue de la Folie Mericourt/ Paris 1888-1902'; VERSO PAGE FIVE: 'Exemplaire no. 52/ [mongram HR] [artist signature] 'Henri Riviere'
