PAST PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS

Gustave Le Grey Exhibition

Le Gray was born in 1820 near Paris and trained there as a painter. Around 1847 he took up photography. Even before making the marine images, he became one of the most renowned pioneers of the new art. His architectural, landscape and portrait photographs, his writings, teaching and inventions were all highly influential. However, in 1860, despite his success, he became bankrupt. Abruptly, he abandoned his business and his family and left Paris for Italy. He finally settled in Egypt to become a drawing instructor, though he continued to take photographs, and died there in 1882.

The seascapes were, and are still, Le Gray’s greatest public, commercial and aesthetic success. He took them in France. Shown here are selections from a first set taken in Normandy in the summer of 1856 and a second set from the Mediterranean coast in spring 1857. Shortly afterwards they were exhibited in London and Paris, to a rapturous response. One reviewer for the Journal of the Photographic Society (21 February 1857) wrote:
'We stop with astonishment before M. Le Gray’s "Sea and Sky", the most successful seizure of water and cloud yet attempted. The effect is the simplest conceivable. There is a plain, unbroken prairie of open sea, lined and rippled with myriad smiling trails of minute undulations, dark and sombrous and profoundly calm, over the dead below – smooth as a tombstone.'

It was not only their beauty that attracted high praise but also Le Gray’s technical mastery in capturing apparently instantaneous views. To arrest breaking waves was an impressive accomplishment at a period when exposures required many seconds rather than split seconds. Most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure for both landscape and sky in a single picture. This usually meant sacrificing the sky, which was then over-exposed. Le Gray’s innovation was to print some of the seascapes from two separate negatives – one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky – on a single sheet of paper.

Le Gray’s glass negatives were the same size as his photographs – about 32 x 42 cm (12 ½ x 16 ½ ins). He placed the negative directly on top of the photographic paper and printed in sunlight. The prints were then toned in a solution of gold chloride in hydrochloric acid. This resulted in a rich, violet-purple colour, with the added benefit of stabilising the images to help them withstand fading over time.

The majority of the Victoria and Albert Museum's fine group of Le Gray seascapes came to the Museum in 1868 as part of the bequest of the millionaire art collector Chauncy Hare Townshend. He had kept them in portfolios along with his watercolours, etchings and engravings. Three other seascapes arrived at the V&A in 2000 as part of a transfer of photographs from the British Museum where they were acquired in 1857. All of the prints have therefore remained in excellent condition, preserved to museum standards almost since they were made.

 

Technical virtuosity aside, Le Gray’s seascapes have great artistic power. In 1856 he wrote: 'Since its first discovery, photography has made rapid progress, especially as regards the instruments employed in its practice. It now remains for the artist to raise it to its proper position among the fine arts.'

Throughout his career, and especially with his marine images, Le Gray rose to this challenge. To unite the seascapes compositionally, Le Gray created a framework of horizontal zones, with few constraining borders. Within this, he explored the potential of the subject, from empty skies and calm waters to brooding cloudscapes and turbulent waves. He enlivened the scenes with figures, jetties, beaches and seagoing vessels. With these simple notes, he composed a series of images that are breathtaking in their subtlety and symphonic grandeur.

Martin Barnes