Antoine-baptiste Petit - View Of The Rue Saint-denis District In The 1830s

Antoine-Baptiste PETIT Paris, 1800 – Versailles, 1864 Watercolor 18 x 27 cm Antoine-Baptiste Petit was a decorative painter and teacher of perspective. He produced views of Paris in the 1830s before painting landscapes of Normandy, Picardy and Brittany in the 1840s and views of Egypt in the 1850s. This pretty watercolor represents Paris in the 1830s/1840s. This is a view of architecture located at the corner of rue Saint Denis and passage Basfour in the arrondissement, as indicated in the drawing. You can also see the different brands. The neighborhood has changed a lot since then. A description of this place in Paris was described in “History of Paris street by street, house by house”, published in 1875. The following notice was written in 1857. “The Basfour passage is found between rue Saint-Denis and the new street of Palestro; but the top has disappeared since 1857. The passage has miraculously survived Boulevard Sébastopol! Origin of the name: the street led to the ovens of the Plasterer of the Green Cross, which later became the cemetery of the Trinity Hospital. (…) Our fathers only knew of a dead end called Basfour, included in the king's census, and in 1714 this alley without a leader had only one house and one lantern. The house is No. 4; In the den of a coal burner there is revealed an ancient chapel of the Trinity, where mass was said before the performances given in this convent by the confreres of the Passion; the local occupation had ceased to be monastic without taking away any of its property rights from the Trinity Hospital. The Vieilles-Étuves house also overlooked the cul-de-sac, but from behind, and the main entrance was rue Saint-Denis. »