Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons

In the 1730s the Faubourg Saint-Germain was filling with grand town houses and short of water. The city’s provost of the merchants, Michel-Étienne Turgot, decided that the new quarter should have a public fountain, and that it should also honour Louis XV. The commission went to Edme Bouchardon, a sculptor trained in Rome and admired for his learning, and work went on from 1739 to 1745 on a plot that had belonged to a convent of Récollet nuns.

Bouchardon built a façade rather than a fountain: a curved front about twenty metres long and ten high, like the wing of a palace, set back in the narrow rue de Grenelle. At the centre, raised on a pedestal, sits a crowned woman who stands for the City of Paris, with the Seine and the Marne reclining at her feet. In niches on either side stand figures of the four seasons, and beneath them low reliefs show winged children carrying the fruits of each season, a picture of plenty that never runs out. A Latin inscription praises the king.

The water came out of a couple of small bronze spouts at the base. Even before it was finished, Voltaire wrote to the comte de Caylus in 1739 that he had no doubt Bouchardon would produce a fine piece of architecture, but what was a fountain with only two taps, where water carriers would come to fill their buckets? Its flow was always feeble, which earned it the nickname ‘la Trompeuse', the deceiver; it was abandoned at the end of the nineteenth century and only reconnected in 1978.

Yet the narrow, out-of-the-way site that made it look absurd also protected it, and it has survived almost unaltered. Next door, at no. 59, the Musée Maillol occupies a house where Alfred de Musset lived as a young man. After restoration, the fountain was reinaugurated in November 2024, its pale stone clean again.

What to look for

• The seated figure of the City of Paris, with the Seine and the Marne at her feet.
• The four reliefs of winged children carrying the fruits of the seasons.
• The small bronze spouts at the base: the whole point of the building, and almost invisible.
• The Latin inscription in honour of Louis XV.

Timeline

1. 1739Fountain commissioned from Bouchardon; Voltaire’s letter to Caylus
2. 1745Fountain completed
3. 1862Listed as a historic monument
4. 1978Water reconnected after decades of disuse
5. 2024Reinaugurated after restoration (12 November)

Plaques within 250 m

• 59 Rue De Grenelle · 10 m

  Alfred de Musset habita de 1824 à 1830 la maison sitiuée dans la cour de la maison du 59. Hommage des mussuetistes

• 31 Rue De Varenne · 140 m

  ICI/ETAIT LE CABARET DES ”DEUX ANGES”/OU LOGEA EN 1804/LE CHOUAN GEORGES CADOUDAL/1771 – 1804/ALORS QU'IL PREPARAIT SON COMPLOT/CONTRE BONAPARTE

• 7 Rue Paul Louis Courier · 150 m

  DANS CETTE MAISON/A VECU/DE 1932 JUSQU'A SA MORT/LE PEINTRE/LUCIEN MADRASSI/1881 - 1956

• 16 Rue De Saint Simon · 180 m

  DANS CET IMMEUBLE/D’ATELIERS D’ARTISTES/VECURENT LES PEINTRES/SONIA ET ROBERT DELAUNAY/SONIA DELAUNAY Y EST DECEDEE/LE 5 DECEMBRE 1979

• 108 Rue Du Bac · 190 m

  LAPLACE/MATHÉMATICIEN ET ASTRONOME/NÉ LE 13 MARS 1749/EST MORT/DANS CETTE MAISON/LE 5 MARS 1827

• 108 Rue Du Bac · 200 m

  Ici vécut Romain Gary,/Compagnon de la Libération,/Ecrivain et diplomate/De 1963 à sa mort,/Le 2 décembre 1980.

• 110 Rue Du Bac · 220 m

  ICI A VECU/JAMES McNEILL/WHISTLER/ARTISTE – PEINTRE/DE 1892 A 1901

• 218 Boulevard Saint Germain · 220 m

  DE 1714 A 1746/LOUIS DUC DE SAINT-SIMON/RESIDA EN CET HOTEL/OU IL ECRIVIT LA PLUS GRANDE PARTIE/DE SES MEMOIRES

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 9 in all within this radius.

Sources

• Wikipédia: Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons
• Wikipedia: Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons
• Christie’s: lot 152916 (Voltaire’s letter on Bouchardon’s fountain)
• Sortiraparis: Heritage Days 2024, discover the restored Fountain of the Four Seasons
• Sortiraparis: A walk in the footsteps of Alfred de Musset in Paris
• Wikidata Q2982896 (coordinates, CC0)
• Base Mérimée PA00088687