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.
Frederick H. Evans · 1897
Ely Cathedral: Across Nave and Octagon
- Year
- 1897
- Original process
- Photogravure
- Held at
- J. Paul Getty Museum
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- 1897
- Original held at
- J. Paul Getty Museum
- Public domain
- Since 2014 (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
Diagonal view across the Romanesque nave of Ely Cathedral, opening onto the famous 14th-century Octagon lantern — the eight-sided wooden vault built by carpenter William Hurley between 1322 and 1328 after the collapse of the original Norman central tower, an engineering solution still considered unique in Gothic Europe for its scale and its method of converting a square crossing into an octagonal lantern. Photographed by Frederick H. Evans in 1897 and published as photogravure in Camera Work no. 4 (October 1903), the issue Alfred Stieglitz devoted entirely to the British pictorialist following his major Royal Photographic Society exhibition of 1900. Evans, a London bookseller before turning fully to photography around the time of his friendships with Aubrey Beardsley and George Bernard Shaw, treated cathedral interiors as exercises in pure tonal recording: large-format plate camera, very long exposures, no retouching, and platinum print as exclusive medium for its extended grey scale and archival permanence. The diagonal angle deliberately stages the Norman nave bays as a rhythmic prelude before the Gothic crossing dissolves them into the lantern's diffused zenithal light, the contrast of architectural periods made legible in a single shutter opening. Held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (accession 84.XM.448.7); the Camera Work photogravure is also conserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Alfred Stieglitz Collection) and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. At Maison Picturale, the image is reinterpreted as a contemporary platinum-palladium print on 640 g/m² cotton paper, using the reformulated non-toxic chemistry of Vision Picturale — the noble-metal signature of platinum preserved without the historical dichromate toxicity, signed by our master printers.
Reference file : Getty Museum / Wikimedia Commons (PD)
Procédé Transposition
Print like Frederick H. Evans 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.
