Featured Mata Hari 1906 Cyanotype. Maven ❤️

I just purchased this for my collection yesterday. It is a 1906 Cyanotype of legendary dancer, courtesan, spy, Mata Hari. These are not my pictures of the item, they are from the collector I acquired the Mata Hari from. As one can see, some careful work will have to be done once it is in my hands. I plan on a antique appropriate aesthetic preservation frame for this 114 year old item, so it may be a time consuming, and well thought out project. Once it is framed etc, it should prove to be stunning. I really do love it’s aged inherent characteristics. I have always been fascinated by her iconically & historically, now she has entered my imagination, and collection. Maven ❤️

 

Great score - congrats!

 

Awe, Thank You @blooey I am very happy & excited to be adding this to my vintage and antique photography collection. Original items of her are certainly getting more rare, and harder to come by. Maven ❤️

 

She's lovely and eventually, it will be fun to see how you present her.

 

Thank You @pearlsnblume I think she is beautiful, it may be quite some time before she is finally seen in my final presentation of her. This one looks to be one of the most delicate handlings of a preservation & framing I’ve had yet. I will be turning this one over to someone I know, and have in mind, that most certainly has the expertise & experience. Maven ❤️

 

Beautiful, Maven.
And your new avatar picture too, Mata Hari in a pensive mood, lovely. She really looks like Mata Hari, is she an actress or a model? Surely not the real Margaretha?

You will show us, won't you?

 

It will be some time, but I will definitely reveal the finished framing as soon as it is possible. The image I am using for my avatar @Any Jewelry is a colorized photo of her, it was also originally taken in 1906. Maven ❤️

 

Beautifully done.

 

@Any Jewelry I can see why she was so alluring, there is very much a mystique, and distinction to Mata Hari that lives on til’ this day. Maven ❤️

 

❤️

 

And it must have been even more so in real life. When she was in her 40s she still had lovers half her age. She must have been very charming, and she was certainly much more cultured than many people think. She was betrayed and treated very badly towards the end.

 

Thanks for the trailer, Maven, some lovely photos there. Unfortunately I couldn't understand most of what was said, the PC I am using currently has a terrible sound processor.
But we get a lot of documentaries on her here in The Netherlands, especially on the Frisian language channel, since she was Frisian. Fortunately I can understand Frisian. Being a bit of a Mata Hari fan myself, I watch them all.

 

@Any Jewelry sorry to know you could not hear the trailer properly, rather unfortunate. I have been viewing and reading much about her, I find the blur between fact & myth quite an intriguing element to her story. If you, or anyone has any suggestions on even more documentaries etc I can view on her, I would absolutely love that. Over time, I have viewed as much as I could find online. I am planning a possible future trip to a local, area bookshop to see if I can find more literature about her that I haven’t read. Maven ❤️

 

Most of the ones we get here are in Dutch, Frisian, German, French. Do I remember correctly, are you in Canada? If you understand French, here are two documentaries:

https://www.les-docus.com/tag/mata-hari/

You may have seen this Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/575839659113649/

 

@Any Jewelry I would like to thank you very much for the information/links you have forwarded, very thoughtful, and very much appreciated. And, yes, I am in Canada. Maven ❤️

 

Have you ever read The Spy, by Paulo Coelho? It was published in 2017. The subtitle is A Novel of Mata Hari, so it's definitely fiction but is based on some of the facts of her life. It's in the form of a (fictional) letter that she wrote about her life as she was waiting to be executed. It's a fairly short novel. I found it to be haunting... I knew some things about her life but not enough to know which things in the novel are fiction and which are not.

 

@Figtree3 Thank you for the recommendation, I had noticed it when I was looking at Chapters online. The description of the novel is just as you say. I know, and have discovered historical and factual occurrences in her life, so this novel may be an interesting read, if not, to compare. That is the mystique of her life though, there are many lines that blur much of her factual life, Mata Hari herself had embellished stories, and her stories were never the same, so interpretation by a reader has to be taken quite objectively when trying to understand her. She definitely was a very complex woman. Maven ❤️