Image: the public-domain reference file. Your print is a hand-made interpretation of it, produced at the studio in Sanguine Aquaprint — its matter and tonality are its own.
Adolphe Braun · c. 1865-1875
The Sphinx and the Pyramids
- Year
- c. 1865-1875
- Original process
- Carbon transfer print
- Held at
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1865-1875
- Original held at
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- Public domain
- Since 1948 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 3 to 5 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in carbon transfer
About this work
Carbon print (49.5 × 41.1 cm) of the Sphinx and the pyramids on the Giza plateau, drawn from the Egyptian campaign of Jean Adolphe Braun (1812-1877), the Alsatian photographer-industrialist who founded the Braun studio at Dornach in the 1850s and turned it into a full industrial photographic enterprise by 1860. The Egyptian images were produced in coordination with the milieu of Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, whose excavation programme drew international photographic missions to the Nile valley during the 1860s and 1870s. Braun's large-format carbon plates were marketed both as scientific records of the antiquities and as luxury album material for the European bourgeoisie, in direct competition with the albumen views of Frith, Bonfils and Beato. By this date, Braun had secured a licence to the Swan carbon transfer process (1864) and become the first European industrialiser of the procedure, employing up to 200 staff at Dornach to supply permanent carbon reproductions to the Louvre, the Vatican and the British Museum. Holdings of the Egyptian corpus are dispersed between the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Library of Congress, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar (principal Braun studio archive). Procédé Transposition Maison Picturale: this Giza view is reinterpreted as a direct-monochrome charbon print using the non-toxic chemistry reformulated by Vision Picturale, with pigmented gelatin in Noir Musée or Couleur Profonde tissues transferred onto 640 g/m² cotton paper — the direct contemporary equivalent of the carbon transfer Braun industrialised, preserving its monumental scale and archival permanence without the dichromate hazards of the Swan-Braun workflow.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons / MFA Houston / Google Art Project
Procédé Transposition
Print like Adolphe Braun today — without the toxics.
Each Maison Picturale print is a material reinterpretation of the image. Three readings of the same work — the original, its closest transposition, and a creative transposition into another procédé.
Multi-tone carbon transfer — the most permanent material in all of photography. Contemporary reinvention of the 1855 Poitevin procédé.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour.
View the procédéOr print it yourself
The chemistry of this process, reformulated non-toxic, is available as a kit from Vision Picturale — the house’s studio brand. Your image, your hands, the same chemistry as our printers.
Coffret Charbon Mono — Noir Musée
History of the process
The carbon process was invented in 1864 by Joseph Wilson Swan, the British chemist and inventor also known for his work on the incandescent lamp. He presented it to the Royal Photographic Society in London that same year, patented as the Carbon Process. The principle: a pigmented gelatin hardened by UV exposure through a negative, then transferred onto a final paper.
Carbon very quickly became the reference process for serious photographic publishers. The Lumière brothers' heliographic works in Lyon, the Autotype Company in London and the Braun firm in Dornach made it their industrial process for reproducing artworks for museums. Late nineteenth-century carbon prints held at the Musée d'Orsay, at George Eastman House in Rochester and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art still show their maximum density intact today.
Our approach
A Maison Picturale carbon print is a unique piece made by hand by the master printers of the studio at 1 passage Dagorno, Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour. Each carbon print takes several days of work: preparing the pigmented gelatin, UV exposure, transfer onto the final paper, controlled drying. It is a strictly museum-grade process, intended for serious collectors and institutions.
Our 640 gsm 100% cotton satin watercolour paper suits carbon particularly well: its weight supports the transfer of pigmented gelatin without distortion, and its satin surface fully reveals the slight low relief that signs the process in raking light. This conservation paper, free of optical brighteners, guarantees the work's permanence across centuries.
Inside our studio
1 Passage Dagorno, Paris 20e. Each print is hand-crafted by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour, using Vision Picturale's reformulated non-toxic chemistry. Limited edition, signed and numbered.
Commission this print
- Hand-printed and signed by Tristan Sidem & Raphaël Lebas de Lacour
- Reformulated non-toxic chemistry (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Limited edition, numbered, certificate of authenticity
- 1 Passage Dagorno studio, Paris 20e
- Delivery 3 to 5 weeks · ships worldwide from France
Formats and prices
- ProcédéSanguine Aquaprint
- Coquille44 × 56 cm200 €
- Jésus56 × 76 cm400 €
- Grand Aigle76 × 112 cm600 €
- Univers100 × 140 cm1 200 €
The Carbon transfer process is not yet offered at the studio: this print is made in Sanguine Aquaprint, the non-toxic watercolour gum.
Firm prices: they follow from the procédé and the paper format, as on our Process pages. 100% cotton paper, 640 gsm, deckled edges. Which formats are offered depends on the resolution of the reference file we hold for this work.
Contemporary print after a work in the public domain (CPI L.123-1, 70 years post-mortem). Hand-crafted reinterpretation by Maison Picturale's master printers — this is not an original vintage by the master. The mention 'after [Master]' is systematic on the print and on the certificate of authenticity.
