1. VITTORIO SELLA. Quintino Sella Hut, after the storm, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AVII 473. 11.4x15.3" collodion print, printed c. 1893, mounted on 16.3x12.2" heavy brown board. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: Alps 473. Quintino Sella Hut, after the storm VII; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner; Stamped in ink on mount verso: Depose / Tous Droits Reserves / V. Stella - Biella. Inscribed in pencil: Loan 71.

2. VITTORIO SELLA. Weisshorn and Mischabelhorner, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AVII 463. 16.4x22.6" collodion print, printed c. 1893, flush mounted on thin board, mounted on 18x24" grey board. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: Alps Weisshorn and 463 Mischabelhorner VII; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner; Inscribed in blue pencil on mount verso: 463/ AVII; Inscribed in ink: Alps/ Above clouds on Mt. Castor -/ (Weisshorn + Mischabelhorner in distance.).

By the early 1890s the idea that photographs could be artistic was commonplace, though most artists, including the young Alfred Stieglitz, held that they should be "painterly," soft-focused pictures representing nostalgic, sentimental and romantic qualities. Running parallel to this "pictorial" sensibility were the sharp focused views made by exploration photographers like Sella who was striving to capture geological and geographical verisimilitude through powerfully composed crisp pictures. By 1910 photographers like Stieglitz and Paul Strand began to shift away from pictorial imagery in favor of more documentary, unsentimental, hard edged pictures with a "modernist" sensibility, very like the pictures that Sella had been producing all along. Artistically, Sella was ahead of his time since he had an eye for the abstract masses of mountains, as well as the details of escarpments and glaciers.

Vittorio Sella lived during the Golden Age of European mountain exploration when many peaks were being scaled for the first time. Prior to his era, mountains were mostly regarded as dangerous obstacles to be crossed, haunted by evil spirits. The early nineteenth century saw a dramatic shift in people's perception of mountains, heralded by the Romantic poets who lauded them as "palaces of nature" that embodied the eternal. To Wordsworth and others of the Romantic era, alpine pinnacles became symbols of the heights to which the imagination of man could aspire, toward the unattainable goals of understanding infinity, eternity, and the vastness of God. It was no accident that the beginnings of mountaineering as a sport coincided with the recognition that mountains were, in fact, beautiful. And the development of photography coincided with that very moment in the history of natural philosophy which has been called the "era of moralized mountaineering." This ushered in a sudden interest in landscape and natural scenery, along with poetry, painting, photography, and the art of travel as people sought out the heightened emotions brought about by a full experience of Nature.

1. 473 Good: Mild wear, abrasions, edge and corner wear. Mount has edge and corner wear and loss, dirt and marks.
2. 463 Good to Fair: Moderate to heavy wear, scratches abrasions, edge and corner wear. Mount has edge and corner wear and loss, dirt and marks.