About the work

Eugène Rouyer was a French architect. He was called to Paris by his great-uncle, the famous hydrographer Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré, where he studied and worked under the famed architect Victor Baltard. (Baltard became the Architect of the City of Paris in 1849.) Rouyer and was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1846.

Rouyer was a very successful architect, participating in the design and building of numerous important Paris structures.

Rouyer was also an accomplished draftsman, particularly enamored of drawing French Renaissance monuments. In 1863 he published his drawings in the form of plates grouped in a book entitled L’Art architectural en France depuis François Ier jusqu’à Louis XIV. (The text of the book was authored by conservationist Alfred Darcel.) Rouyer and Darcel noted that contemporary writing on French Renaissance architecture was extravagantly sycophantic; their work consisted of elegant drawings with analyses unencumbered by obsequious prose.

This etching portraying the magnificent ceiling of the Tenth Century Church of Saint-Hilaire de Tillières-sur-Avre was engraved by Sellier and printed by Drouart, Paris.