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Rare prints and maps...Since 1918! Click here to go to Darvill's home page.

Since Adirondack Retro acquired Darvill's Rare Prints in August of 2022, we have been working tirelessly on our New State-Of-The Art Website. We are excited to announce that it is now up and running and that our massive inventory of Antique Prints and Rare Maps are being transferred over to the new site daily. In addition to the nearly 500,000 prints found on www.DarvillsRarePrints.com, Adirondack Retro offers an eclectic selection of Antique and Vintage Advertisements along with their Limited Edition Giclee Prints. During this transition, customers will still be able to shop and make purchases on www.DarvillsRarePrints.com.

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Lehnert & Landrock prints

We are pleased to offer one of the world's largest collections of original Lehnert and Landrock héliogravures (photogravures)
from 1900-1930s of iconic scenes of natives and locales in Northern Africa: Tripoli, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco for the most part.

Click here for the complete Darvill's collection of genuine 1900-1930s Lehnert and Landrock héliogravures available for purchase

Photographer: Rudolph Lehnert (1878–1948),
born Grossaupa, Bohemia, trained at Vienna Institute of Graphic Arts.

Ernst Heinrich Landrock, business partner (1878–1966).

Landrock met Lehnert in Switzerland. His admiration for Lehnert's photography lead them to establish a photographic business in Tunis in the early twentieth century – around 1910. The business proved successful, though it was temporarily suspended when Lehnert was interned during the First World War. In the 1920s they resumed their work in Cairo, where their studio still exists at 44 Sharia Street. They listed themselves as postcard publisher's rather than photographers, presumably so they could concentrate on the romaticized images of the Middle East that they prefered to produce. These they published as postcards, larger souvenir photographs for albums and as reproductions in books. In 1930, Lehnert seems to have returned to Tunis, opening a studio independently at 43, Avenue Jules-Ferry. In 1985, over forty years after Lehnert had retired to Carthage in 1939 and Landrock had retired to Germany, their collection of negatives were given to the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne.

 

 Click here to see and purchase original, genuine 1910-1930s Lehnert and Landrock héliogravures  

 

Lehnert and Landrock print

Please note: we do not purchase prints from unsolicited sources, nor do we provide appraisals. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of such requests, we are not able to provide information or research material for prints you own. We beg your understanding.

  From the pages of the National Geographic magazine and picture postcards on sale in European kiosks nearly one hundred years ago, to the black and white prints that sell year in and year out at the Sherif Street bookstore that still bears their name, the photographs of Lehnert & Landrock sustain a vanishing romantic image of the Arab world.

  These authentic heliogravures (sometimes referred to as photo lithographs or photo engravings) measure approx. 9.5 by 12 inches (23 x 30 cm) and are generally sepia-toned, but many have been coloured by a seemingly hand-tinted photo process. Several larger desert panorama scenes are also available, measuring approx. 12 x 23 inches (30 x 60 cm.). The photographs were taken by Lehnert and Landrock in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Spain (the Alhambra). Unfortunately, we do not have specific identifiers for each photo except for the Alhambra photos.

  Though many of the original glass plate negatives were rediscovered in 1982, it is believed the glass printing plates for the amazing images in our collection were destroyed during the American & British bombardment of Germany in World War II.

Learn more about Lehnert and Landrock from these sources:

Web sites:

Luxor-Westbank

Egypt Holidays Directory

Reference Works:

CARDINAL, Philippe. Lehnert & Landrock: L'Orient d'un photographe. Lausanne: Favre, 1987. Has one of the best texts.

FAVROD, Charles & André ROUVINEZ. Lehnert & Landrock: Orient 1904-1930. Paris: Marval, 1999. Has the best selection of illustrations.

GABOUS, Abdelkrim. la Tunisie des photographes 1975-1910. Paris: Éditions du Cygne, 1994. A general study of most of the workshops working in Tunisia in that period.

MEGNIN, Michel. Tunis 1900-1910 Lehnert and Landrock photographes. Paris: Apollonia Éditions, 2005. Many of the illustrations came from gravures in our collection!

PEREZ, Nissan N. Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885. New York: Abrams, 1988. Does not have any material on L & L but is the definitive text on early Near East work, with necessary background information, useful in making judgments for purchases.