Gordon-Bennett Trial 1905, Lorraine-Dietrich - Ernest Montaut

Gordon-Bennett Trial 1905, Lorraine-Dietrich - a hand-coloured plate by Ernest Montaut from his album of the great motor races of 1895 to 1907.

The 1905 trial, in the Auvergne. Duray, on a Lorraine-Dietrich, finished third and joined the team that would defend the Gordon Bennett Cup.

De Dietrich of Lunéville raced under the Lorraine-Dietrich name with the cross of Lorraine as its emblem, printed on the tissue guards of its plates in this album, and with Arthur Duray, Henri Rougier and Gabriel among its drivers.

Ernest Montaut (1878-1909) more or less invented the motor-racing print. Working in Paris in the first decade of the century, he drew the cars at full stretch, raked forward, with the road streaming away behind them and dust boiling off the wheels - a way of showing speed that motoring artists have borrowed ever since.

This plate comes from Montaut's album "10 ans de courses: les marques victorieuses 1897-1907" - ten years of racing and the marques that won it. Each plate records one victory from the great town-to-town races and Gordon Bennett contests, with the result printed on the tissue guard laid over it, and the plates were coloured by hand.

Prepared from a high-resolution scan of the original hand-coloured plate, trimmed to the image and a margin of its own sheet. Each print is made to order on cotton-fibre archival paper, then mounted with a deep even border and hand-framed in our workshop rather than sent out.