VITTORIO SELLA. Siniolchum from above Zemu Glacier, 1899, Sella number HS 72. 15.3x11.3" gelatin silver print, printed 1901, mounted on 18x14" heavy gray board. Inscribed in black ink mount recto: Siniolchum. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in lower right of print. Inscribed in pencil mount verso: 64. Inscribed in black ink mount verso: Siniolchum / Sikhim (or Sikkim) Himalayas

Siniolchu is 6,888 m 22,598 ft east on the eastern ridge of Kanchenjunga, Douglas Freshfield who organized and wrote about this and many other mountaineering expeditions declared Siniolchum to be the most superb triumph of mountain architecture and the most beautiful snow mountain in the world.

Vittorio Sella was born in 1859 into a wealthy, politically influential family in the Piedmont town of Biella, Italy. As a boy his classical studies included Greek and Latin along with painting lessons, in which he excelled. He was introduced to the recently invented art of photography by his father, a textile mill owner named Venanzio Giuseppe Sella and his uncle, Quintino Sella, a famous Italian minister of finance, both of whom were enthusiasts of the new art. In 1856, Venanzio published a treatise on photography that was translated into German and French and was included in Roret's Encyclopedic. Quintino Sella not only founded the still-active Italian Alpine Club, but also took his young nephew hiking through the Alps as he taught him to love the mountains.

Along with being a mountaineer and photographer, Sella was also an energetic businessman. In 1886 he formed a bank, Gaudenzio Sella & Co., with three of his brothers and three cousins (as of 1999, "The Sella Group"). In 1899 he and his family started a modern viticulture program (vineyard) in Sardinia, known today as "Sella & Mosca." His other business venture was the distribution, exhibition, and sale of his mountain views. Like other large format photographers of the time - William Henry Jackson, Carleton Watkins, Bisson Freres, Roger Fenton, the Alinari Brothers, and Samuel Bourne - Sella produced a catalog of mountaineering photographs that numbered 100 views in 1882. By 1888 that number had grown to 534. Sella had a field and studio assistant named Emile Bota. He preferred to manage his own distribution. Later he worked with Spooners in London from 1882 to 1917 and when Spooner died, he moved his work to Sifton Praed. His photographs were exhibited widely in climbing, geographical, and exploration clubs and societies throughout Eurasia and North America. In the United States, the Appalachian Mountain sets were shown at over 100 venues in the 1890s and 1900s.

Good. Minor wear, edge and corner wear, slight yellowing edges of print, mount has corner and edge wear, mount verso has tape marks, tape repair to torn corner.