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.
Alphonse Poitevin · c. 1860
L'Hôtel de Ville de Paris et le Pont d'Arcole
- Year
- c. 1860
- Original process
- Photographic negative (Poitevin process)
- Held at
- Bibliothèque nationale de France
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1860
- Original held at
- Bibliothèque nationale de France
- Public domain
- Since 1953 (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
View of the Hôtel de Ville of Paris and the Pont d'Arcole, an architectural study from Poitevin's BnF archive that documents the city centre of Paris at the dawn of the Second Empire urban transformation. Louis-Alphonse Poitevin (1819-1882), engineer of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures (class of 1843), is the chemist who in 1855 filed the three foundational patents that opened the pigment era of photography: gum bichromate, the carbon process and photolithography — each derived from his demonstration that potassium dichromate sensitises pigmented colloids such as gum arabic and gelatin combined with carbon black. In 1862 he was awarded the Duc de Luynes Prize by the Société française de photographie for his work on photolithography, and the same year published the Traité de l'impression photographique sans sels d'argent, the reference manual on silver-free pigment processes. This Paris view belongs to the corpus of architectural plates Poitevin built throughout the 1860s as test prints for his procédés, photographing monuments and provincial heritage from the salt works of Gouhenans (Haute-Saône) to the medieval keep of Mondoubleau. The Hôtel de Ville pictured here is the 16th-century Renaissance building burned during the Commune of 1871 — making the plate, today held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), a pre-fire document of major urban-history value. At Maison Picturale, an architectural study of this register can be reinterpreted as a contemporary gum bichromate print using the non-toxic Aquaprint reformulation developed by Vision Picturale — a direct homage to the inventor of the very process, now practised without dichromate salts.
Reference file : Gallica BnF (Public Domain)
Procédé Transposition
Print like Alphonse Poitevin 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 €
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.
