Views and urban experiences of Paris in 1900 in the etchings by Joaquim Sunyer

Abstract

Joaquim Sunyer (Sitges, 1874-1956), a painter and engraver, excelled in the latter facet with an extensive catalogue of engravings produced at different points in his artistic career. An exceptional period is the series of engravings he made in his youth during his stay in Paris at the dawn of the 20th century, which deserve to be carefully observed because of their high artistic quality.

In them, he depicts various facets of urban life, lively views which, while evoking certain typicality, avoid picturesque illustrative parameters. Sunyer depicts a highly sympathetic vision of the bohemian society and the middle and working classes, sometimes even the marginalised, moving about the city. Entertainment at dances and shows, gatherings of idle students, strollers, street markets, washerwomen, workers and a string of characters with a long iconographic tradition in identifiable settings, streets or squares that often give their name to the picture: the Luxembourg Park, Rue Lepic, Rue de Belleville, Rue de la Lune, Canal Saint Martin, etc., where buildings and establishments, means of transport, pavements, lighting, etc., are recognisable, The ensemble thus makes up a particular testimonial repertoire of the Paris of the time, which can be compared with literary, photographic and even cinematographic sources.

Although photography and film were already the means of documentary capture of this time and place, Sunyer's prints, without abstracting from reality, combine the document with a romantic melancholy through an experimental and highly expressive execution in colour etching. Obviously, artistic creation is not a reliable testimony of a cadastral or notarial reality, but through the artistic breath it gives off, we are allowed not only to think and enjoy its phenomenology, but also some particular flashes of the Paris of the Belle Époque.