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Gustave Le Gray

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

Description

Maker

Title

Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre

Year

ca. 1856-1857

Medium

Albumen print from two glass negatives

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Dimensions

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

Type

Credit

Museum purchase: bequest of Lyra Brown Nickerson, by exchange

Object Number

82.035

Projects & Publications

Publications

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.

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.