Antoine-Baptiste PETIT - View of the Saint-Denis district in Paris in the 1830s/40s

Antoine-Baptiste PETIT
Paris, 1800 - Versailles, 1864
Watercolor
18 x 27 cm

Antoine-Baptiste Petit was a decorative painter and teacher of perspective.
He painted views of Paris in the 1830s, before moving on to landscapes of Normandy, Picardy and Brittany in the 1840s, and views of Egypt in the 1850s.
This lovely watercolor depicts Paris in the 1830s/1840s. It is a view of architecture at the corner of rue Saint Denis and passage Basfour in the second arrondissement, as shown in the drawing. You can also see the various signs. The district has changed a lot since then. A wide variety of trades rubbed shoulders in those days: trimmings stores, butchers, dental surgeons...
A description of this part of Paris can be found in "Histoire de Paris rue par rue, maison par maison", published in 1875. The following entry was written in 1857.
"Passage Basfour lies between rue Saint-Denis and the new rue de Palestro; but the top of it has disappeared since 1857. Miraculously, the passage survived the boulevard Sébastopol! Origin of the name: the street used to lead to the ovens of the Plâtrière de la Croix Verte, which later became the cemetery of the Trinité hospital. (...) Incidentally, our fathers only knew of a cul-de-sac by the name of Basfour, included in the king's censive, and in 1714 this headless alley had only one house and one lantern. The house is no. 4; an old chapel of the Trinité, where mass was said before the performances given in this convent by the confrères de la Passion, is revealed in the den of a coal merchant; the local occupation had ceased to be monastic without taking anything away from the property rights of the hôpital dé la Trinité. The Vieilles-Étuves house also overlooked the cul-de-sac, but from the back, and its main entrance was on rue Saint-Denis."

Ref: FH9ADWMP0J