Paris: Vogelmarkt (Birdmarket small)

Max Pollak

Pollak did this etching around 1915 in Paris. He used many of the etching techniques developed by Whistler a few decades before; focusing the viewer's attention on the elements that interested him, indicating a context using a few well chosen lines and adding brown color to the ink when printing the plate to suggest a "color" to the composition.

The subject is the famous Parisian Bird Market, the “Marché aux Oiseaux” which takes place in the Louis Lépine flower district on the Il de la Cité on Sunday each week. Now expanded to a pet market, dealers set up, often in antique cages, offering for sale various birds; finches, doves, canaries, parrots, as well as chickens, ducks and domestic fowl. On the ground are aquariums, hamsters, etc. It now is one of the last remaining pet markets in Europe.

This impression has a pencil inscription in the artist's hand that reads "Printed a 10". Though he anticipated an edition of 100 it appears he only printed 10 impressions. A large, color aquatint plate of the subject was confiscated by the Nazis in the 30s and it is likely this plate was also was destroyed.