Stadspoort aan de oever van de Seine 1761 - 1762

Franz Edmund Weirotter created this etching of a city gate on the banks of the Seine in the 18th century. Weirotter, who straddled the transition from the Rococo to the Neoclassical, captured in his printmaking the intimate relationship between the urban and the rural. The scene depicts a bustling city gate, a threshold between worlds. Here, the gate is a site of commerce, a place of labor, and a point of transit. The figures within the image offer a glimpse into the social fabric of 18th-century France. How might the different groups depicted, from merchants to laborers, experience this space? The image operates on the axis between the desire for idyllic, arcadian landscapes, and the growing realities of more urban environments. Weirotter’s print invites us to consider the complex negotiations between nature and culture, personal identity and collective experience, during a period of profound social transformation.