Heinrich Kühn · c. 1900s
Innsbrucker Ansicht (Innsbruck View)
- Year
- c. 1900s
- Original process
- Gum bichromate on paper
- Held at
- Albertina Vienna
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1900s
- Original held at
- Albertina Vienna
- Public domain
- Since 2015 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 4 to 8 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in gum bichromate
About this work
Innsbrucker Ansicht (Innsbruck View) is a soft-toned gum bichromate townscape of Innsbruck, the Tyrolean city where Dr. Heinrich Kühn (1866-1944) settled in 1888 and developed his lifelong mastery of pictorial photography. Held at the Albertina Vienna and measuring 27.5 by 32.6 cm, the print belongs to the small body of urban subjects in Kühn's overwhelmingly domestic and landscape-oriented corpus, which makes it a rare and instructive sheet for understanding how Kühn applied his pictorial vocabulary to the built environment of his adopted city. The image renders Innsbruck through the painterly diffusion and selective accent that gum bichromate makes possible — a single substrate, multiple passes of pigment, and an envelope of soft mountain light specific to the Inn valley, with the surrounding Alps suggested rather than described. Trained as a physician, Kühn became the leader of the German-Austrian wing of Pictorialism and a co-founder of the Wiener Kleeblatt (Vienna Trifolium) with Hans Watzek and Hugo Henneberg. A close correspondent of Alfred Stieglitz, who published him in Camera Work pl. 18 (1905) and pl. 33 (1911), and Edward Steichen, he invented the Platingummidruck (gum-over-platinum) process and was among the first European photographers to adopt the Lumière Autochrome in 1907. His prints are held at the Albertina Vienna, MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Städel Museum Frankfurt, and Galerie Maier Innsbruck. Process Transposition Maison Picturale: Kühn's gum bichromate townscapes are transposed at the Maison Picturale Paris atelier via Aquaprint MP, the non-toxic Vision Picturale reformulation, which preserves the layered chromatic softness of Innsbrucker Ansicht without the historical dichromate hazard. Kühn entered the public domain in 2015.
Reference file : 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.
Multi-layer gum bichromate. Each pigment laid separately — VP reformulated recipe, no chromium VI.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem.
View the procédéHistory of the process
Watercolour gum (gumprint, gum bichromate print) is one of the most versatile and oldest photographic processes. Its principle was discovered by Mungo Ponton in 1839, who observed that paper soaked in potassium bichromate hardened under light. It was Alphonse Poitevin who, in 1855, had the idea of mixing watercolour pigment with sensitised gum arabic: by exposing this layer under a negative, the exposed areas harden and retain the pigment while unexposed areas dissolve during washing.
The gumprint enjoyed its golden age between 1890 and 1920, within the Pictorialist movement. Photographers such as Robert Demachy, Edward Steichen, and Gertrude Käsebier used it to create images halfway between photography and painting, asserting photography as a fine art in its own right. Each colour layer is applied, sensitised, and exposed individually — a four-colour print therefore requires a minimum of four passes.
Our approach
The gumprint made by Maison Picturale is an entirely handmade print where each colour layer is a unique pictorial gesture.
We work on 100% cotton satin watercolour paper at 640 g/m², capable of withstanding multiple watercolour passes without warping. In four-colour mode, each print requires four successive layers — cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — each individually sensitised, exposed, and developed. The result is an image with vibrant colours and a grain impossible to achieve with digital printing.
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.
