Constant Puyo · c. 1900
Portrait of Cléo de Mérode
- Year
- c. 1900
- Original process
- Gum bichromate print
- Held at
- Musée Nicéphore Niépce
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1900
- Original held at
- Musée Nicéphore Niépce
- Public domain
- Since 2004 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 4 to 8 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in gum bichromate
About this work
Portrait of Cléo de Mérode, circa 1900, is Constant Puyo's gum bichromate portrait of the Belle Époque dancer Cléo de Mérode — étoile of the Paris Opéra ballet, lover (so rumour had it) of King Léopold II of Belgium, and one of the most photographed icons of the fin de siècle, immortalised by Nadar, Reutlinger, and the entire carte-postale culture of 1900. Puyo, having retired from the École polytechnique and the French artillery (commandant rank) in 1902 to dedicate himself fully to the Photo-Club de Paris that he had joined in 1894 with Robert Demachy, treats Mérode not as a society document but as an Art Nouveau allegorical figure: the dancer's signature centre-parted hair and serene profile are dissolved in soft-focus gum bichromate so that the image reads as a painted reverie rather than as a press portrait. The work exemplifies Puyo's fascination with the Art Nouveau feminine — a thread that runs from Fantaisie en blanc (c. 1900) through Woman with white parasol (1909) and into his theoretical writings, notably Les Procédés d'art en photographie (1906, with Demachy) and Les Objectifs d'artiste (1906, with Jean Leclerc de Pulligny). The print is conserved at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, the dedicated French photography museum founded in the city where Nicéphore Niépce produced View from the Window at Le Gras (1827), and parallel Puyo plates from this corpus are held in the Stieglitz Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (33.43.x series) and the Musée d'Orsay (PHO 1991 series). Maison Picturale reinterprets the portrait as a gum bichromate print using the MP Aquaprint formula — Vision Picturale's reformulated non-toxic gum that removes the historical dichromate — on 640 g/m² cotton paper, preserving the painterly surface that gives Puyo's Mérode its Art Nouveau softness.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons / Musée Nicéphore Niépce (Public Domain)
Procédé Transposition
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-layer gum bichromate. Each pigment laid separately — VP reformulated recipe, no chromium VI.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem.
View the procédéHistory of the process
Watercolour gum (gumprint, gum bichromate print) is one of the most versatile and oldest photographic processes. Its principle was discovered by Mungo Ponton in 1839, who observed that paper soaked in potassium bichromate hardened under light. It was Alphonse Poitevin who, in 1855, had the idea of mixing watercolour pigment with sensitised gum arabic: by exposing this layer under a negative, the exposed areas harden and retain the pigment while unexposed areas dissolve during washing.
The gumprint enjoyed its golden age between 1890 and 1920, within the Pictorialist movement. Photographers such as Robert Demachy, Edward Steichen, and Gertrude Käsebier used it to create images halfway between photography and painting, asserting photography as a fine art in its own right. Each colour layer is applied, sensitised, and exposed individually — a four-colour print therefore requires a minimum of four passes.
Our approach
The gumprint made by Maison Picturale is an entirely handmade print where each colour layer is a unique pictorial gesture.
We work on 100% cotton satin watercolour paper at 640 g/m², capable of withstanding multiple watercolour passes without warping. In four-colour mode, each print requires four successive layers — cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — each individually sensitised, exposed, and developed. The result is an image with vibrant colours and a grain impossible to achieve with digital printing.
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
Available formats
- 30 × 40 cmFrom 280€
- 40 × 50 cmFrom 420€
- 50 × 70 cmFrom 680€
- 70 × 100 cmFrom 1180€
- Custom sizeFrom 1850€
Indicative pricing — the exact rate depends on the chosen procédé, support and finish.
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.
