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Attributed Guglielmo Plüschow - Bordighera 1901 - Original Albumen Portrait Photograph
A striking and newly surfaced fin-de-siècle Italian art photograph, inscribed “Bordighera 1901,” and very plausibly attributable to the circle of Guglielmo Plüschow.
Fresh to Market · Italian Riviera Aesthetic Photography · Double-Sided Album Mount · Haunting Symbolist Portrait
Bibliographic Details
Author / artist: Attributed to Guglielmo Plüschow (1852–1930)
Title: Untitled original portrait study of young boy, inscribed “Bordighera 1901”
Place of Publication: Bordighera, Italy [inscribed on mount]
Date: 1901
Details: Single original albumen print mounted on album card, with a second unrelated albumen photograph to verso (“Monte Carlo 1901”)
Presentation: Removed from an old photograph album; mounted on original album card
Size: Photograph approx. 22.5 × 16.4 cm; mount approx. 37 × 26.5 cm
Provenance: Freshly discovered in a large private travel photograph album with provenance to Brigadier-General Montagu Creighton Curry
Condition
Good to Very Good overall. The photograph with light general age-toning and some warm overall tinting to the paper. A faint scratch runs across the face area, visible under close inspection. Minor foxing and age-marking to the album mount. Rear with another original albumen photograph captioned “Monte Carlo 1901” in manuscript. A visually striking and entirely displayable example.
Description
A haunting and highly attractive original albumen portrait photograph, inscribed in contemporary ink “Bordighera 1901”, and very plausibly attributable to Guglielmo Plüschow or his immediate artistic circle. Freshly discovered in a substantial old travel album, the image has the unmistakable mood of fin-de-siècle Mediterranean aesthetic photography: psychologically intense, formally pared back, and unusually modern in its directness.
The sitter is presented in a close, sculptural half-length pose against a pale, nearly abstract background, with softly modelled features, dark cropped hair, and a lightly draped upper body. The result is not a conventional studio likeness, but something much more evocative and ambiguous — poised between portrait, symbolist study, and idealised figure image. It is precisely this tension that makes the best work of the Plüschow / von Gloeden orbit so distinctive and still so compelling today.
The inscription “Bordighera 1901” is especially suggestive. Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera near the French border, was a well-known artistic and cosmopolitan enclave at the turn of the century, attracting painters, photographers, and wealthy European travellers. While Plüschow is most strongly associated with Rome, his work belongs squarely to this wider Mediterranean visual world of southern light, classical pose, and carefully aestheticised youth.
Particularly appealing here is the fact that the photograph remains on its original album card mount, and that the reverse preserves another period albumen image captioned “Monte Carlo 1901”, confirming the mount’s original travel-album context. Removed only recently from the album in which it had long remained, the piece has the feel of a genuinely fresh-to-market discovery, rather than an example long circulating through the trade.
Notes
Original photographs attributable to Guglielmo Plüschow are increasingly sought after for their combination of symbolist atmosphere, classical sensuality, and early modern photographic sensibility. Even where exact attribution remains cautious, works from this orbit are strongly collected across the fields of Italian photography, queer visual culture, continental aestheticism, and turn-of-the-century portraiture.
The present example is especially desirable for its date, inscription, original album context, and unusually compelling image. The sitter’s gaze and severe cropped hairstyle give it an arresting visual presence that feels far ahead of its date, while the surviving mount and companion verso photograph add further documentary charm.
A scarce, atmospheric, and highly evocative Riviera photograph — and a very appealing candidate for the Plüschow circle.
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