Notre Dame de Paris

Jean-François Rafaëlli · c. 1890

Medium

Oil on composition board

Original size

73.6 × 63.5 cm (29 × 25 in.); Framed: 80.7 × 93.1 × 6.4 cm (31 3/4 × 36 5/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Rafaëlli's view of Notre-Dame catches the cathedral not as a monument but as a presence — emerging from the grey-silver atmosphere of a Paris afternoon, its twin towers looming over the Seine with quiet authority. Jean-François Rafaëlli occupied an unusual position in late nineteenth-century French painting: close enough to the Impressionist circle to exhibit alongside Degas in 1880 and 1881, yet distinctly his own. Where his contemporaries chased colour and light in gardens and cafés, Rafaëlli was drawn to urban edges — the working-class fringes of Paris, streets in mist, figures absorbed into their surroundings. Here he turns that sensibility on one of the city's most recognisable landmarks, rendering Notre-Dame with the same atmospheric restraint he brought to a chimney stack or a factory wall. Painted on composition board rather than canvas, the work has a compressed, almost chalky surface quality that suits the overcast mood. Rafaëlli was championed by the critic J.-K. Huysmans, who praised his ability to find poetry in the unglamorous corners of modern city life — a quality evident even in a subject as grand as this cathedral. Each hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on linen canvas using traditional techniques, preserving the tonal subtlety and atmospheric weight that make the original so quietly compelling.