Gustave Le Gray

Collection of Alan Francis Clutton-Brock, London

Thence by descent through family

Eugenia Parry Janis, The Photographs of Gustave Le Gray (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1987), p. 71

Ken Jacobson, The Lovely Sea-View: A Study of the Marine Photographs Published by Gustave Le Gray, 1856-1858 (Petches Bridge: 2001), fig. 9

Sylvie Aubenas et al., Gustave Le Gray 1820-1884 (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), fig. 144 and cat. 131

Edward Lucie-Smith, The Invented Eye: Masterpieces of Photography, 1839-1914 (New York, 1975), pl. 36

Manfred Heiting, et al., At the Still Point: Photographs from the Manfred Heiting Collection, Volume I (Los Angeles and Amsterdam, 1995), p. 93

Weston Naef, Photographers of Genius at the Getty (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), pl. 15

Perhaps Gustave Le Gray’s most celebrated image, La Vague Brisée is unique as the photographer’s only vertical seascape composition. Le Gray made this image and several other seascapes from Sète, a seaside port in the South of France, in April 1857, just two years after beginning his artistic exploration of the Normandy and Mediterranean coasts. The resulting work was immediately popular in England and France, and La Vague Brisée was one of only three images that Le Gray filed for copyright with the Ministry of the Interior. 

As is often the case with these impressive photographs made from collodion-on-glass negatives, there is a dramatic contrast between light and dark, with a tempestuous dialogue between the expansive sky, the dramatic shoreline, and the sea. The sky, occupying nearly half of the composition, is rife with shadowy wisps of cloud, though not shrouded enough to obscure the sun, which reflects gently from the water in the center of the image. The frothy swells crashing energetically against the shoreline display exceptional intensity, standing starkly against the intricate detail of the craggy rocks in the foreground. Perhaps most remarkable of all is the clarity with which the central image of a sailboat is rendered - from the gradual sfumato of the sails as they take on a strong headwind, to the imposing lines of the mast and the gaff, completed by the barely-discernible flag that flies from the center.

Not only did the large format and high level of detail of these albumen prints garner widespread attention, but the subject matter appealed to collectors of maritime paintings. Le Gray’s foray into the genre alludes to seventeenth-century Dutch paintings by the likes of Willem van de Velde the Elder, Albert Cuyp, and Jan van Goyen, as well as late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century romantic and sublime canvases by Caspar David Friedrich, Thomas Luny, and J. M. W. Turner. In turn, Le Gray’s La Vague Brisée and other marine studies were the first photographic seascapes to garner critical acclaim.

Examples of this image are in the following collections: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (originally in the collection of André Jammes); the Art Institute of Chicago; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.