The present sheet, dated 1888, depicts workers scaling a stairway to the upper level of the Eiffel Tower just one year before the monument was completed for the Exposition Universelle. Binet emphasizes the tower's overwhelming scale in the upper register of the sheet as one's eye becomes lost in the complex web of ladders and beams rendered in heavy strokes of black conté crayon. Light pierces the weblike steel structure, emphasizing the majestic view from within.
The inscription at the lower right corner indicates that Binet gave the sheet to his friend Louis de Fourcaud (1851-1914), an art historian and professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Inscribed, signed and dated at lower right, in pen and brown ink, "à mon ami / Louis de Fourcaud / Adolphe Binet / 1888."
Fourcaud, L. de (Louis), 1851-1914, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, former owner.
William Griswold et al., The World Observed: Five Centuries of Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp, New York, 2001, p. 126, no. 114.