Gertrude Käsebier · c.1908
Portrait of Clarence H. White
- Year
- c.1908
- 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
- c.1908
- Original held at
- Library of Congress
- Public domain
- Since 2005 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 4 to 8 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in platinum-palladium
About this work
Portrait of Clarence H. White (c. 1908) is Gertrude Käsebier's platinum-print portrait of her fellow pictorialist and longtime collaborator Clarence H. White (1871-1925), made at a turning point in their shared career: White had moved from Newark, Ohio to New York in 1906 and was about to begin teaching at Columbia Teachers College, while both photographers were navigating the slow disintegration of the Photo-Secession under Stieglitz. The sitting captures White in his characteristic restraint — small frame, soft eyes, a stillness of bearing — rendered in the long mid-tone scale of the platinum process and the matt, paper-fibre finish that Käsebier preferred for portraits of artists. The print belongs to the Library of Congress (Käsebier-Turner archive) and is a key document of the friendship that would, in 1916, lead them — together with Karl Struss and Edward R. Dickinson — to co-found the Pictorial Photographers of America after the dissolution of Stieglitz's Photo-Secession. Käsebier and White had been Photo-Secession founders together in 1902 and exhibited side by side in Camera Work; the 1908 portrait visually anchors their alliance against Stieglitz's growing modernist turn toward Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. At Maison Picturale, the print is studied as a reference for pictorialist artist-portraiture and as a node in the network of relationships that structured American pictorialism. The Procédé Transposition transposes Käsebier's platinum process to non-toxic platine-palladium reformulated by Vision Picturale on cotton paper 640 g/m², preserving the long tonal scale, the soft modelling of skin and the silvery neutrality of period platinum without lead or chromium.
Reference file : Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
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.
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.
View the procédéHistory of the process
Le platinotype est inventé en 1873 par l'ingénieur britannique William Willis, qui dépose la même année le brevet du procédé sous le nom Platinotype Process. Willis fonde en 1879 la Platinotype Company, qui commercialise les papiers sensibilisés au platine en Europe pendant plusieurs décennies. Le palladium est introduit au début du XXe siècle comme variante économique, sans rien céder sur la qualité tonale.
Le platine-palladium devient rapidement le procédé de prédilection des maîtres de la photographie d'art. Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Alvin Langdon Coburn et Frederick H. Evans en font leur procédé signature, et leurs épreuves originales conservées à la Royal Photographic Society de Londres, à la George Eastman House de Rochester et au Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York témoignent encore aujourd'hui de la perfection tonale du platine. Stieglitz écrivait que le platine offrait une échelle de gris plus étendue que tout autre procédé.
Our approach
Chaque tirage platine-palladium réalisé à l'atelier 1 Passage Dagorno est une pièce unique en édition très limitée, destinée aux collectionneurs sérieux et aux institutions. Le coût des sels de platine et de palladium, métaux nobles dont les cours suivent ceux des marchés financiers, en fait notre procédé haut de gamme. Chaque épreuve est préparée, sensibilisée et développée à la main par nos artisans tireurs.
Notre papier aquarelle satiné 100 % coton 640 g/m² est particulièrement adapté au platine-palladium : sa fibre coton pure, sans azurants optiques ni additifs alcalins, permet aux sels métalliques de s'inscrire en profondeur dans le papier, et sa surface satinée révèle pleinement la tonalité chaude unique et l'échelle tonale exceptionnelle du procédé.
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.
