Paris - Pont Neuf

 

Gerald Geerlings

  1897 - 1998 (biography)

1988  

lithograph on zinc 

10 15/16 x 16 1/8" image 

pencil, l.r. 

edition 40 

titled in the plate, lower left; subtitled in the plate, lower margin: "Since completion in 1604, a mute witness to the worst of times and the best of times." 

Czestochowski 50 

white wove BFK Rives 

published I/I 

artist 

12837 

$450.00 

In Gerald Geerling’s sepia-tone lithograph of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, he juxtaposes the oldest standing bridge in the City of Lights against a moody sky and its reflection in the surface of the Seine. In acknowledgment of the bridge’s long history and survival of both World Wars and the ups and downs of Parisian social and economic strife, he has subtitled the work “Since completion in 1604, a mute witness to the worst of times and the best of times.” Originally meant to be built straight across the Seine, builder Pierre de Isles convinced the architects that it would accrue less damage if built at an angle so as not to resist the river’s current. In this way it has been seen as a symbol of strength and longevity.

Geerling chose a zinc plate for this lithograph, which adds to the feeling of the piece as a drawing rather than a print owing to the plate’s softer, more porous nature. His style borrows from early French lithography in his choice of color and the composition itself, which uses the sky as over half of the total scene and encompasses much of the city’s famed skyline on the low horizon.

Gerald Geerlings was a printmaker, architect and author born in Wisconsin in 1897. Having served both world wars, Geerlings returned to printmaking with emphasis and expertise in architecture and cityscape. Architecture and the cityscape are Geerlings' predominant interests. He brought an exquisite quality of draftsmanship and a sense of composition to his work. The cityscapes done with aquatint possess an underlying romanticism that is suggestive of permanence and transition.