Juvisy, les belles fontaines

From the Getty Museum record

> The pair of majestic fountains that frame this view of a road disappearing into the distance are at one end of a monumental bridge at Juvisy, on the highway from Paris to Fontainebleau. The bridge, fountains, and their sculptural finials were erected in 1728 by order of Louis XV as part of his campaign to improve and embellish French thoroughfares. The discovery of springs during the course of excavations for the foundations of the bridge prompted the decision to divert the water to create two fountains for the refreshment of dusty travelers and their horses. At the time of Eugène Atget's picture, water still flowed into the basins from spouts in the form of grotesque masks. Atop the fountain on the left is an allegorical sculpture depicting Time holding a portrait of the king, the revelation of which has the effect of crushing Discord. It was chiseled by Guillaume Coustou (1677-1746), who may also have been responsible for the simpler group that crowns the other fountain. Atget's notation on the print that it depicts "the beautiful fountains" reflects the fact that they were known by this appellation from early on and is an indication of how deeply steeped he was in French cultural history. > > Unlike the tight spatial constraints seen in many of Atget's photographs, taken as most of them were in urban settings, this image offers a long vista vanishing at the horizon. Even in his pictures of the gardens of the old royal palaces, he rarely chose to make axial views along their avenues into the distance. The result here is a prospect without limits, a sense of the road stretching out infinitely before the traveler, reaching beyond the familiar and immediate to the unknown. Left unresolved, however, is the question of how Atget arrived with his equipment at this seemingly remote location. > > Originally published in *Eugène Atget*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Gordon Baldwin (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 26. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.