Thursday, January 28, 2016

Gustave Le Gray photographs, 19th century

Gustave Le Gray
Ramparts at Carcassonne
salted paper print from waxed paper negative
1851
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Le Gray
Seascape
1857
albumen silver print
Getty

Gustave Le Gray
Portail milieu d'Aubeterre
1851
salted paper print from waxed paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Le Gray
Effect of Sunlight: Ocean no.23
ca. 1857-59
albumen silver print
Getty

Albumen silver prints and salted paper prints by early French photographer Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884). He was most active and influential in Paris during the 1850s, conducting technical experiments and teaching the craft to many of those who would become his artistic successors. The last period of Le Gray's life was set in Egypt, where he became a professor of drawing.

Gustave Le Gray
Victor Cousin
ca. 1854-59
albumen silver print
Getty

Gustave Le Gray
Cavalry Maneuvers at Camp de Châlons
1857
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Le Gray
Standing Female Nude
ca. 1855
albumen silver print
Clark Art Institute


Gustave Le Gray
Reclining Female Nude
ca. 1856
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Le Gray
The Steamboat
1856
albumen silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gustave Le Gray
Louvre - Pavillon Mollien
ca. 1855
albumen silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gustave Le Gray
Paris Salon of 1852
1852
salted paper print from waxed paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Le Gray
Temple of Edfu
1867
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave le Gray
Tree Study: Forest of Fontainebleau 
ca. 1856
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Le Gray
Hollow Oak Tree: Fountainebleau
1867
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012

It was a small shock so see Maurice Sendak identified by the Metropolitan Museum as the donor of the final Le Gray albumen silver print, Hollow Oak Tree: Fountainebleau. But then one look and it was clear why Maurice Sendak would have coveted this image  as if a forest from one of his own drawings had been transformed backwards into an almost-actual Nineteenth Century.