Constant Puyo · c. 1890-1895
The Reading Woman
- Year
- c. 1890-1895
- Original process
- Autotype (photomechanical print)
- Held at
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-F-2001-7-1107B-87)
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1890-1895
- Original held at
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-F-2001-7-1107B-87)
- 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 carbon transfer
About this work
La Liseuse (The Reading Woman), circa 1890-1895, is one of Constant Puyo's earliest pictorialist subjects — a domestic interior in which a young woman is absorbed in her book — and bears a technical particularity: the surviving reproduction is an autotype (photomechanical print), not a gum bichromate, which signals that the image was diffused through the print culture of the 1890s rather than only through original photographic exhibition prints. The motif itself — the liseuse, the reading woman as Symbolist and Intimist topos — links Puyo to his painter contemporaries Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Maurice Denis, and to the Nabis interior aesthetic that defined Parisian intimism around 1895. Puyo (Émile Joachim Constant Puyo, 1857-1933) was at this date still on active service as an artillery officer in the French Army (he would retire with the rank of commandant in 1902) but had already joined the Photo-Club de Paris in 1894, the year he was also made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. He had not yet co-authored Les Procédés d'art en photographie (1906, with Robert Demachy) nor Les Objectifs d'artiste (1906, with Jean Leclerc de Pulligny), so La Liseuse precedes his theoretical formalisation of pictorialism and represents the formative moment of his soft-focus poetics. The autotype is conserved at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam under accession number RP-F-2001-7-1107B-87 and is released under CC0; comparable Puyo prints from this period are held in the Stieglitz Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (33.43.x series) and at the Musée d'Orsay (PHO 1991 series). Maison Picturale reinterprets La Liseuse as a contemporary gum bichromate print using the MP Aquaprint formula — Vision Picturale's reformulated non-toxic gum without potassium dichromate — printed on 640 g/m² cotton paper, restoring the painterly intimacy that the original autotype photomechanical reproduction could only suggest.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons / Rijksmuseum RP-F-2001-7-1107B-87 (CC0)
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-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.
View the procédéHistory of the process
Le procédé charbon est inventé en 1864 par Joseph Wilson Swan, chimiste et inventeur britannique également connu pour ses travaux sur la lampe à incandescence. Il présente le procédé devant la Royal Photographic Society de Londres la même année, breveté sous le nom de Carbon Process. Le principe : une gélatine pigmentée durcie par exposition UV à travers un négatif, puis transférée sur un papier final.
Très rapidement, le charbon devient le procédé de référence des éditeurs photographiques sérieux. Les héliographes des frères Lumière à Lyon, l'Autotype Company à Londres et la maison Braun à Dornach en font leur procédé industriel pour la reproduction d'œuvres d'art destinées aux musées. Les épreuves charbon de la fin XIXe conservées au Musée d'Orsay, à la George Eastman House de Rochester et au Metropolitan Museum of Art présentent encore aujourd'hui leur densité maximale intacte.
Our approach
Le tirage charbon Maison Picturale est une pièce unique réalisée à la main par les artisans tireurs de l'atelier 1 Passage Dagorno, Tristan Sidem et Raphaël Lebas de Lacour. Chaque épreuve charbon demande plusieurs jours de travail : préparation de la gélatine pigmentée, exposition UV, transfert sur papier final, séchage contrôlé. C'est un procédé strictement muséal, destiné aux collectionneurs sérieux et aux institutions.
Notre papier aquarelle satiné 100 % coton 640 g/m² est particulièrement adapté au charbon : son grammage soutient le transfert de gélatine pigmentée sans déformation, et sa surface satinée révèle pleinement le léger bas-relief signature du procédé en lumière rasante. Ce papier de conservation, sans azurants optiques, garantit la pérennité plurisééculaire de l'œuvre.
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.
