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.

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 · 3 to 5 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

Print like Constant Puyo 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 procédé

Or 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 — pochon N, VP N°03 et mire Résinotype

Coffret Charbon Mono — Noir Musée

En cours de productionVision Picturale

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.

In 1899 the agronomist Théodore-Henri Fresson (1865-1951) presented a revolutionary carbon paper to the Société française de photographie: Charbon-Satin, developed directly by mechanical dissolution (sawdust, or chamois leather depending on the period), without the constraining transfer stage of Swan's historical carbon. His family made it a proprietary recipe, manufactured the paper in their workshop at Dreux and later at Savigny-sur-Orge, and supplied it to the great Pictorialists — Robert Demachy, Constant Puyo, Léonard Misonne, José Ortiz Echagüe — who made it their medium of choice for its dense matter and exceptional permanence. Five generations later, Michel and Jean-François Fresson still practise the Fresson process at Savigny-sur-Orge, the only studio in the world to master this family recipe. The Maison Picturale carbon print keeps the transfer logic of Swan's historical process (1864), modernised by the Vision Picturale reformulation without dichromate; for the direct development on the final paper that is the distinctive innovation of Fresson's 1899 paper, Maison Picturale offers its neighbouring process, Aquaprint (non-toxic reformulated gum bichromate), which shares with Charbon-Satin that transfer-free logic — the direct pigment family — although the matrix (gum arabic versus gelatin) and the development method (hot water versus mechanical dissolution) remain distinct.

Technically, carbon offers the deepest tonal density of any photographic process, with a dMax above 2.1, higher than fibre-based baryta silver. Examined in raking light, a carbon print reveals a slight low relief of pigmented gelatin — a physical signature impossible for any other process to imitate. It is this relief that distinguishes an authentic carbon print from a mere pigment print.

The contemporary revival of carbon began in the 1990s with the work of Sandy King in the United States and the international network he brought together through books published by Bostick & Sullivan. European practitioners such as Calvin Grier in Spain and the Belgian studios relaunched a demanding practice, restoring the photographic print to the status of a museum object.

At Maison Picturale, carbon printing is carried out in the studio by co-founders Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour, in the line of this museum pigment tradition. Our sister brand Vision Picturale took part in the chemical reformulation that makes safe studio use possible while preserving the absolute archival permanence of the historical process.

View the full procédé page — Carbon transfer

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.

The formats available for carbon are Grand Aigle (76 × 112 cm) and Univers (100 × 140 cm) — scales worthy of the process's exceptional tonal depth. We offer two variants in the catalogue: Noir Musée, a dense monochrome recalling the heliogravures of the nineteenth century, and Couleur Profonde, obtained through three successive CMY transfers with millimetre-precise registration between the layers.

For a commissioned print, you can send us your high-resolution file through the contact form. Our printers prepare a digital negative calibrated for carbon's specific tonal curve, which is particularly demanding in the highlights. Allow several weeks: carbon permits no haste.

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.

The procédé at work — each layer laid by hand

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.

Order a custom print

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.

Other works by the master

c. 1900

Fantaisie en blanc

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1909

Woman with white parasol

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1899

Été (Summer)

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1897

Eingeschlafen (Sommeil)

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