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 · 1911
Across the Transepts of Westminster Abbey
- Year
- 1911
- Original process
- Platinum print
- Held at
- Library of Congress
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- 1911
- Original held at
- Library of Congress
- 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
Wide interior view across the transepts of Westminster Abbey, the Plantagenet coronation church begun under Henry III in 1245 on the site of Edward the Confessor's earlier Romanesque abbey, and continued in the Early English and Decorated Gothic styles. Photographed by Frederick H. Evans in 1911, during the Country Life magazine commission that was made possible by a rare circumstance: the abbey was closed to the public for several weeks before the coronation of George V (22 June 1911), allowing Evans to install his large-format plate camera in the empty nave and crossing and work at the very long exposures his platinum signature required — impossible with worshippers present. By then Evans — formerly a London bookseller and friend of Aubrey Beardsley and George Bernard Shaw — had been the subject of a major Royal Photographic Society exhibition (1900) and had seen his cathedrals published in Camera Work plate 4 (October 1903) and plate 16 (October 1906). He worked exclusively in platinum and, increasingly, platinum-palladium, refusing all retouching on the principle that the negative alone must carry the architectural fact. Held at the Library of Congress, Washington (Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ds-00277), with companion prints from the Westminster campaign at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 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 : Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons
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
- 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.
