Selected works

Renowned as a painter of architectural subjects and urban scenes and appreciated for the precision and colouristic refinement of his paintings, Eduard Gaertner quickly became an important and acclaimed artist of the 19th century, having won the constant patronage of King Frederick William III and Tsar Nicholas I.

Our picture is one of the few painted by Gaertner during his stay in Paris between 1825 and 1828. From Berlin, he walked to Paris in 1825 and joined the studios of François Edouard Bertin and Jean Victor Bertin. There he learned to capture light and paint atmospheres, which completely changed the way he painted architectural views. His palette, in particular, became warmer. His favourite subjects during his years in Paris were Notre-Dame and the streets between the Ile de la Cité and the Place de la Concorde.

Rue Neuve Notre Dame began at Place du Parvis and ended at Rue du Marché-Palu (Rue de la Cité after 1834). It was destroyed and replaced by the current Parvis de Notre Dame during Baron Haussmann’s major works in the 1860s.

Another version is preserved in Potsdam at the Berlin-Brandenburg Foundation for Prussian Castles and Gardens (and also dates from 1826. There are some variations between these two versions: the figures in the street are different, with the exception of the man on the right, the man and his donkey, the woman in white and the group of officers to her left. The posters on the wall to the left of our painting disappear in the Potsdam version. As for the dog on the right, it is in both versions, but there are numerous gaps in our painting, which confirms that it predates the Potsdam version. A drawing dated 1825 shows only the architecture (Paris, commerce d’art). Another preparatory drawing is also known, in which we find the figures common to both versions, with the exception of the dog, which is not present (see I. Wirth, Eduard Gaertner, Frankfurt, 1979, reproduced on pl. 15).