1. VITTORIO SELLA. Hospice of Great Saint Bernard, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AIV 1521. 11.4x15.3" collodion print, printed c. 1893, flush mounted on thin board, mounted on 16 1/2x13" grey board. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: Alps Hospice of Great Saint Bernard IV 1521; inscribed in pencil on mount verso: Loan 43; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner.

2. VITTORIO SELLA. Waterfall at Valsorey, near Bourg Saint Pierre, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AIV 1522. 23.9x17.7" gelatin silver print, printed c. 1893, mounted on 18 3/4x25 3/4" heavy black board. Blind stamped on mount recto: IV 1522; inscribed in pencil on mount verso: 240 / IV 1522 / 1/2" / 1 1/4; Paper label adhered on mount verso inscribed with ink: Gift of Miss Anna H Chace; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner.
Sella's uncle, Quintino Sella, was a famous Italian minister of finance and founder of the Italian Alpine Club. It was he who taught the boy to love the mountains by taking the fifteen-year-old Sella on his first ascent in 1874, followed by another a year later.

The print in this lot like hundreds of others were in many exhibitions and the prints suffered damage. Thus, these exhibition prints are being offered here at bargain prices.

According to Charles Fay, writing in the 1893 AMC Bulletin, Vittorio Sella was born in the Piedmont Region of Biella, northern Italy in 1859, in sight of the outliers of the Alps. His father, Venanzio Guiseppe Sella, was a woolen manufacturer who ran textile mills called Lanificio Maurzio Sella, which had been in the family for hundreds of years. The son seems to have inherited his father's versatility, for Venanzio Sella not only authored a standard work on woolen manufacture, but also published a treatise in 1856 on the then-new art of photography, which was translated into German and French and incorporated in Roret's Encyclopedic.

1. Excellent: 1521 Very Good: Mild abrasions, wear, dirt, spots, corner wear and edge wear. Mount has edge and corner wear, dirt and marks .
2. 1522 Very Good: Mild silvering on edges of print, abrasions, wear, spots, corner wear and edge wear.