The Bois de Boulogne, the vast royal hunting park at the western edge of Paris, was transformed in the 1850s into an expansive public park for bourgeois recreation—weekend promenades where one might see and be seen, an effortless paddle on a calm lake, luncheon or tea at an outdoor pavilion, and communing with a fantasy version of nature. Photographing the new park was Charles Marville’s first official commission; he would be tapped again by the City of Paris in the 1860s to record both the older parts of the city being demolished and the modern Paris taking shape.