# Versailles, Fountain of Enceladus > Eugene Atget - 1922-1923 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/eugene-atget/atget-versailles-fountain-of-enceladus-cleveland/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-30 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Eugene Atget - **Date:** 1922-1923 - **Medium:** Albumen print, gold toned - **Dimensions:** Image 22.5 x 17.8 cm (8 7/8 x 7 in.); mounted and matted to 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.) - **Object type:** Photograph - **Period:** French, twentieth century - **Current location:** Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A late Atget: an albumen print, gold toned, made in 1922 or 1923 when the photographer was in his sixties and returning to a subject, the gardens of Versailles, he had first taken up more than two decades earlier. It shows the Enceladus fountain, a lead-and-gilt giant crushed under rock, made by Gaspard Marsy after a drawing by Charles Le Brun in 1675-76 and still standing in the Bosquet de l'Encelade today.Atget sold his work as documents for artists and died in 1927 largely unrecognized; the reputation now attached to his name was built afterward by Berenice Abbott, who bought what remained of his estate, and by the Museum of Modern Art, which acquired the bulk of the surviving negatives and prints from Abbott and the dealer Julien Levy in 1968. This particular sheet did not travel with that collection. It reached the Cleveland Museum of Art separately in 1985, alongside a companion Atget Versailles print whose own published provenance runs through the Estate of Atget and the Julien Levy Collection, a chain this record treats as probable for this sheet too, but not documented for it specifically.Cleveland catalogues the print as albumen paper; the standard technical account of Atget's career has him moving off true albumen stock after the First World War, which leaves the exact printing paper of this 1922-23 sheet an open, unresolved question rather than a settled one. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1922-1923** Eugene Atget `[documented]` (creation) Negative exposed and printed during Atget's later campaign of photographing at Versailles in the 1920s. The verso inscription VERSAILLES BASSIN DE L'ENCELADUS 1166 is Atget's own negative number. - **1927** Estate of Eugene Atget, then Berenice Abbott and Julien Levy `[unknown]` (gap) Atget died 4 August 1927. His remaining negatives and prints passed through Andre Calmettes to Berenice Abbott, and half of Abbott's holding was later sold to the dealer Julien Levy. This general chain is well documented for Atget's estate as a whole and, specifically, for this print's companion, Cleveland accession 1985.113, whose own published provenance reads Estate of Eugene Atget; Julien Levy Collection. Cleveland has not published a provenance for this print, 1985.117, itself, so this entry records the probable chain without asserting it as documented for this exact sheet. - **-1985** Unknown intermediate market history `[unknown]` (gap) No dealer, sale, or intermediate owner between the Levy Collection and the Cleveland Museum of Art's 1985 purchase has been identified in the sources consulted. - **1985-present** Cleveland Museum of Art `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased with the John L. Severance Fund and accessioned 27 August 1985, the same day as the companion print 1985.113. Confirmed CC0 under the museum's own open access program as of 2026-08-30. ## Open questions - What did the Cleveland Museum of Art pay for this print in 1985? The John L. Severance Fund purchase price has not been published in the sources consulted. - Did this print pass through the Estate of Eugene Atget and the Julien Levy Collection before reaching Cleveland, as its companion print 1985.113 explicitly did? Cleveland's own published record does not state a provenance for 1985.117 itself. - Is the printing paper technically true albumen, or a post-First World War matte albumen or gelatin aristotype paper catalogued loosely as albumen? No technical examination of this specific sheet has been published in the sources consulted. - Does the glass negative, Atget's own number 1166, survive, and if so where? It is not recorded among the 1,415 negatives the Museum of Modern Art acquired from Abbott and Levy in 1968, and no other holding has been identified here. - Exactly when within 1922-1923 was the negative exposed, and was this sheet printed by Atget himself at that time or from the negative afterward? Cleveland's own date range covers both possibilities and does not resolve which applies. ## Sources - [1] Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access API, record for accession 1985.117, Versailles, Fountain of Enceladus. Retrieved 2026-08-30; share_license_status = CC0. - [2] Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access API, record for accession 1985.113, Versailles, Chaste Venus, the companion print acquired the same day. Retrieved 2026-08-30. - [3] Cleveland Museum of Art, object page for accession 1985.117. - [4] Wikimedia Commons, file and extended metadata for File:Eugene Atget - Versailles, Fountain of Enceladus - 1985.117 - Cleveland Museum of Art.jpg, confirming Public Domain / CC0 status. - [5] Sculptures et jardins de Versailles (Chateau de Versailles), notice for Gaspard Marsy, Encelade: commission, payment record, gilding, and 1995-97 conservation history. - [6] Museum of Modern Art, press release no. 146, ATGET AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, 1 December 1969. - [7] Art Gallery of New South Wales, Atget's technique, education resource summarizing Szarkowski and Hambourg's technical study of Atget's printing papers. - [8] Wikipedia, Eugene Atget. Flagged as a tertiary source, consolidating biography, client base and the Calmettes-Abbott-Levy-MoMA chain; retained here only for facts corroborated by the Museum of Modern Art's own 1969 press release. Flagged for replacement with a scholarly monograph (Szarkowski and Hambourg, The Work of Atget, 1981-85). - [9] Wikidata, Q79936333, Versailles, Fountain of Enceladus. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.