The Eiffel Tower seen through the eyes of Henri Riviere

As Armond Fields elegantly put it in is seminal book about the artist: “Rivière completed another important project, one which had occupied his time on and off since 1888: recording the building of the Eiffel Tower.  He had completed his sketches in the 1890’s, and had made two of the images into woodcuts, but had abandoned cutting the rest of the images.  There were thirty-six separate images, each to be printed in five colors with a total of 550 sets produced, 99,000 separate printings were required.  Rivière decided to translate the images into lithographs, and in 1902, Les Trente-Six Vues de la Tour Eiffel appeared. […]  The work was loosely based on Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Fujiyama, and is one of the greatest examples of Japonisme.  The combination of a Japanese style depicting and urban, technological, Western object makes it a perfect example of how French artists synthesized their Japanese influences.”