Pont-au-change, Paris
Charles Meryon French
Not on view
This etching is among the most expansive views of Meryon’s Paris prints and contains more narrative detail than the majority of the works in the series. A drowning man in the foreground reaches out toward a boat whose occupants, distracted, gesture toward a balloon inscribed "Esperanza" (Hope, in Spanish) that hovers in the sky above. Pedestrians on the bridge also wave at the balloon as a funeral cortege passes by. Meryon composed a separate plate of verse to accompany this etching. It begins, "O divine hope! light balloon!" but concludes pessimistically, describing hope as a "false mirage."
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