The Breaking Wave

Photography and Media

1857

Gustave Le Gray
French, 1820–1884

Trained as a painter before taking up photography around 1847, Gustave Le Gray was highly regarded for his composition as well as his technique. His seascapes, which were publicly exhibited in London and Paris in 1857 to great acclaim, displayed his technical mastery: he combined two negatives—one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky—to render a scene otherwise unable to be captured photographically. Moreover, Le Gray managed to arrest a breaking wave in this dramatic vertical image, an accomplishment almost unheard of at a time when exposures required several seconds. This photograph comes from an extremely rare album of Le Gray’s seascapes possibly assembled for a Spanish patron.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Gustave Le Gray
Title: The Breaking Wave
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1857
Medium: Albumen print, No. 15 from the album "Vistas del Mar"
Inscriptions: Signed recto, lower right, on image, in red pencil [?]: "Gustave Le Gray"; blind stamped recto, on album page, lower center: "PHOTOGRAPHIE / GUSTAVE LE GRAY & C / PARIS"; unmarked verso
Dimensions: Image/paper: 41.4 × 33.6 cm (16 5/16 × 13 1/4 in.); Album page: 64.5 × 50.8 cm (25 7/16 × 20 in.)
Credit Line: Hugh Edwards Fund
Reference Number: 1971.577.10
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/126478/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs from the Permanent Collection,” March 20–May 30, 1976. (Miles Barth)
Art Institute of Chicago, “The Photography of Gustave Le Gray,” September 18–December 6, 1987.
Milwaukee Art Museum, “Gustave Le Gray in Context,” January 18–April 14, 2002.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Regarding Seas and Skies: Photographic Seascapes by Gustave Le Gray, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and DoDo Jin Ming,” November 1, 2003–February 15, 2004. (David Travis)
Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery 10 Permanent Collection Rotation, November 21, 2015-May 8, 2016.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.