This is a picturesque view of the Grund quarter in central Luxembourg City on the banks of the Alzette river. At far right in frame, women can be seen washing clothes on the side of the river.

A native of Luxembourg, Jacques Tillmany’s visit there in 1913 or slightly before resulted in the article: Luxembourg, A Photographic Paradise written by his good friend Sigismund Blumann, published in the August, 1913 issue of Camera Craft.  Two excerpts, with the article beginning as follows:

Of late, comic opera and romance have done much to make the independent duchy of Luxembourg well known to peoples of distant nations. All the free art of the scene painter and all the imagination of the story writer cannot add to the real interest and picturesqueness of this little two-by-three freehold. Anyone equipped with a camera and a fair knowledge of exposure needs only to aim in any direction and squeeze the bulb to get something worth while, both as an historic and an artistic production. Composition has been cared for, centuries back, by Barons and serfs. Every tessellated castle, every narrow way, every bridge and moat, has been placed as if under the direction of a consummate artist. p. 364

Mr. Tillmany, whose pictures of Luxembourg are worthy of a master’s brush, modestly insists that the camera, not he, deserves all credit for the results. Over a dozen films were exposed each time he went out, each one resulting in a picture well worth a print except as an occasional one was spoiled through error in exposure or failing to wind the key. He found his greatest difficulty in keeping the expenditure for films down to a reasonable. figure, the subjects being so plentiful and inviting. To say that one can take pictures two hundred days in a year, and take several dozens a day, working within a radius of a few miles, will perhaps give some adequate idea of the possibilities of this photographic gold-mine, beautiful Luxembourg. p. 368

An unusual collaboration between the two photographers resulted in two finished prints, including this one, which only bears the monogram of Blumann. (1.) A period postcard (rppc-held by this archive) taken by Jacques Tillmany and sent to Blumann’s then home at 3159 Davis Street in Fruitvale, CA shows a much wider view of the Grund quarter in central Luxembourg City. 

1.  Sigismund Blumann’s grandson Thomas High confirmed to PhotoSeed in July, 2024 that his grandfather never visited Luxembourg.