Image: the public-domain reference file. Your print is a hand-made interpretation of it, produced at the studio in Platinum-palladium — its matter and tonality are its own.
Charles Marville · c. 1865
Hôtel de Ville, Paris
- Year
- c. 1865
- Original process
- Albumen silver print
- Held at
- George Eastman Museum, Rochester
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1865
- Original held at
- George Eastman Museum, Rochester
- Public domain
- Since 1950 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 3 to 5 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in platinum-palladium
About this work
Marville photographs the Hôtel de Ville on the place de Grève during the last decade of its Renaissance state — built progressively between 1533 and 1628 under François I and Henri IV, then enlarged in 1837-1846 by Étienne-Hippolyte Godde and Jean-Baptiste-Cicéron Lesueur — before its destruction by fire during the Paris Commune of 23-24 May 1871. Charles-François Bossu — known as Charles Marville — makes the view as photographer to the City of Paris (officially confirmed 1862), under the documentary mandate granted by Baron Haussmann's Préfecture de la Seine. The image is editorially inseparable from his post-Commune view of the ruins: the pair forms the canonical before/after diptych of 19th-century Parisian iconography, reproduced in the catalogues of the Musée Carnavalet's "Paris 1871" exhibitions and in Sarah Kennel's National Gallery monograph ("Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris", Washington, 2013), as well as in Maria Morris Hambourg's Marville texts for the Metropolitan Museum. Marville exposes a 30×40 wet-collodion glass negative on the place de Grève at dawn for the long pose; the orthochromatic emulsion does not register blue light and the sky is retouched by brush on the negative — the source of Marville's distinctive luminous white skies on every monumental architectural view of his Paris corpus. Held at George Eastman Museum, Musée Carnavalet, BHVP, Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Metropolitan Museum (Gilman Collection). Procédé Transposition Maison Picturale: for this monumental architectural subject, platinum-palladium grand-format is the natural restitution, exploiting the matte tonal density and chemical permanence of the platinum process for a museum-grade reproduction; Vandyke — non-toxic ferric ammonium citrate and silver, reformulated salted paper — covers the modular fine-print scale.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons / George Eastman Museum / Google Art Project
Procédé Transposition
Print like Charles Marville 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.
Noble metals — platinum and palladium — on 640 gsm cotton paper. The longest tonal range in all analog photography.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour.
View the procédéHistory of the process
The platinotype was invented in 1873 by the British engineer William Willis, who patented the process that same year under the name Platinotype Process. In 1879 Willis founded the Platinotype Company, which sold platinum-sensitised papers across Europe for several decades. Palladium was introduced in the early twentieth century as an economical variant, giving nothing away on tonal quality.
Platinum-palladium quickly became the process of choice for the masters of fine-art photography. Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Frederick H. Evans made it their signature process, and their original prints held at the Royal Photographic Society in London, at George Eastman House in Rochester and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York still testify to platinum's tonal perfection. Stieglitz wrote that platinum offered a wider scale of greys than any other process.
Our approach
Every platinum-palladium print made at the studio at 1 passage Dagorno is a unique piece in a very limited edition, intended for serious collectors and institutions. The cost of platinum and palladium salts — noble metals whose prices follow the financial markets — makes this our premium process. Each print is prepared, sensitised and developed by hand by our master printers.
Our 640 gsm 100% cotton satin watercolour paper suits platinum-palladium particularly well: its pure cotton fibre, free of optical brighteners and alkaline additives, lets the metal salts embed deep in the paper, and its satin surface fully reveals the process's unique warm tonality and exceptional tonal scale.
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
- ProcédéPlatinum-palladium
- Coquille44 × 56 cm200 €
- Jésus56 × 76 cm400 €
- Grand Aigle76 × 112 cm600 €
- Univers100 × 140 cm1 200 €
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.
