Gustave Le Gray
French, 1820–1884
The Breaking Wave
INV-1264
Gustave Le Gray
French, 1820–18841857
The Breaking Wave
Gustave Le Gray French, 1820–1884 →19th centuryalbumen silver printphotographic process
Date
1857
Medium
Albumen print, No. 15 from the album "Vistas del Mar"
Dimensions
Image/paper: 41.4 × 33.6 cm (16 5/16 × 13 1/4 in.); Album page: 64.5 × 50.8 cm (25 7/16 × 20 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Hugh Edwards Fund
Trained as a painter before taking up photography around 1847, Gustave Le Gray was highly regarded for his composition as well as his technique. His seascapes, which were publicly exhibited in London and Paris in 1857 to great acclaim, displayed his technical mastery: he combined two negatives—one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky—to render a scene otherwise unable to be captured photographically. Moreover, Le Gray managed to arrest a breaking wave in this dramatic vertical image, an accomplishment almost unheard of at a time when exposures required several seconds. This photograph comes from an extremely rare album of Le Gray’s seascapes possibly assembled for a Spanish patron.
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