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.
Frank Eugene · ca. 1910
Male Nude (Männerakt)
- Year
- ca. 1910
- Original process
- Platinum print
- Held at
- Münchner Stadtmuseum
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- ca. 1910
- Original held at
- Münchner Stadtmuseum
- Public domain
- Since 2007 (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
Male nude study (Männerakt) realized circa 1910 during Eugene's Munich teaching years at the Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie, conserved at the Münchner Stadtmuseum which holds the largest single corpus of Eugene's work (over 400 prints) following the bequest of his German estate. The image is rare in the pictorialist canon: nude male studies were exceptional in early 20th-century art photography, dominated by female allegorical figures, and Eugene's incursion into the academic male nude reactivates the genealogy of Munich-academy classical drawing tradition in which he was trained from 1886. The figure is posed in three-quarter contrapposto against a neutral painterly backdrop, in direct citation of Greco-Roman statuary and the Albrecht-Dürer / Hans-von-Marées Munich tradition that Eugene synthesized into photography. The platinum print exhibits Eugene's signature scratched-negative intervention applied selectively: cross-hatched lines on the background and along the contour of the figure, leaving the modeled flesh deliberately untouched to preserve the academic flesh-tone economy of the platinum tonal scale. This technical decision — selective scratching to articulate figure-and-ground — exemplifies Eugene's matured Munich-period practice, more disciplined than the all-over hatching of the 1898 figural works. The print circulated in the Munich Lehrkörper as a pedagogical model for Eugene's classes, and entered the Stadtmuseum corpus that anchors his German legacy alongside Selbstbildnis, Dora Polster and Prinz Luitpold. For Maison Picturale, this nude operates as the figure-study module of the platine-palladium and photogravure curricula: contemporary digital negative engraved at the burin in selective hatching, contact-printed on palladium, then transposed to héliogravure (Poitevin process) as a workshop reference.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
Procédé Transposition
Print like Frank Eugene 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
- PriceOn request
The reference file we hold for this work is too low-resolution for us to commit to a large-format print. We are looking for a better source: write to us and we will answer on this specific point before any order.
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.
