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.
Heinrich Kühn · 1911
Portrait of Lotte
- Year
- 1911
- Original process
- Heliogravure / photogravure
- Held at
- Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
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
- Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
- Public domain
- Since 2015 (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
Portrait of Lotte Kühn (1911), one of Heinrich Kühn's four children and a recurring sitter alongside her siblings Hans, Walter, and Edeltrude, who together with their governess and Kühn's longtime muse Mary Warner — the subject of the iconic Study in Tonal Values III (1908) — form the intimate cast of his domestic Pictorialism. This heliogravure, held by the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, was among the most widely reproduced of Kühn's family images and circulated through European photographic journals in the early 1910s. The heliogravure technique, a fine intaglio photomechanical method on copper plate, allowed Kühn to disseminate his pictorial vision well beyond the limited circle of original gum bichromate and platinum prints. Dr. Heinrich Kühn (1866-1944), Austrian-German pictorialist, trained in medicine before settling in Innsbruck in 1888 and dedicating his life to perfecting pictorial photography. As a member of the Wiener Kleeblatt (Trifolium) with Hans Watzek and Hugo Henneberg, and a close interlocutor of Alfred Stieglitz, who published him in Camera Work pl. 18 (1905) and pl. 33 (1911), and Edward Steichen, Kühn led the German-Austrian wing of international Pictorialism. 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, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Städel Museum Frankfurt, and Galerie Maier Innsbruck. Process Transposition Maison Picturale: heliogravure compositions of this kind are studied at the Maison Picturale Paris atelier through Aquaprint MP, the non-toxic Vision Picturale reformulation of gum bichromate, which preserves the matte tonal velvet of Kühn's family portraits without the historical dichromate hazard. Kühn entered the public domain in 2015.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons / Rijksmuseum (Public Domain)
Procédé Transposition
Print like Heinrich Kühn 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.
