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Gustave Le Gray

Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre, ca. 1856-1857

Description

Maker

  • Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1882, French

Title

Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre

Year

ca. 1856-1857

Medium

Albumen print from two glass negatives

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • albumen

Dimensions

31.1 x 40.3 cm (12 1/4 x 15 7/8 inches)

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Photographs

Credit

Museum purchase: bequest of Lyra Brown Nickerson, by exchange

Object Number

82.035

Projects & Publications

Publications

The Lens of Impressionism

Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874

A Handbook of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Early Exposures

March 13 - July 19, 2015

This seascape’s dramatic effects are the product of Gustave Le Gray’s stunning innovation in photographic technique. Previously, the proper exposure of both landscape and sky in a single picture was impossible to achieve, since photographic emulsions were not equally sensitive to all colors of the spectrum. Le Gray solved this problem by printing two negatives on a single sheet of paper, exposing the sea and the sky on separate occasions.

Le Gray was trained as a painter, and the silhouetted fleet of ships—the brigantines of the French fleet of Napoléon III— recalls the grace and majesty of painted Romantic seascapes.

Capturing the Light

September 22 - November 12, 1989

Recent Gifts and Acquisitions

November 5, 1982 - January 2, 1983

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre with the accession number of 82.035. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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