The vampire
(Le Stryge)
1853
from the Etchings of Paris (Eaux-Fortes sur Paris) series (1852–54)
- Medium
- etching
- Measurements
- 17.2 × 13.0 cm (plate) 24.8 × 19.4 cm (sheet)
- Catalogue/s Raisonné
- Schneiderman 27 VI
- Edition
- 6th of 10 states
- Departments
- International Prints / International Prints and Drawings
- Credit Line
- Gift of Jacobus Francis van Breda and Helen Mary Cooley through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2024
- Gallery location
- Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
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The vampire, which depicts a stone gargoyle from Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral against an aerial view of the city, is one of Meryon’s most famous etchings. The sinister atmosphere of the print, which is enhanced by the wheeling black crows, is underscored by Meryon’s addition of two lines of verse in the fourth state: ‘The insatiable vampire, eternal lust / Forever coveting its food in the great city’. Meryon had a tumultuous life and spent periods of time in care for mental instability. The dark, Gothic tenor of many of his prints has been read in the context of his biography.