The Port and City of Sète-Mediterranean (Port et Ville de Sète-Mediterranée)
1857
Medium
Albumen print, from the album "Vistas del Mar"
Dimensions
Image/paper: 32.1 × 40.3 cm (12 11/16 × 15 7/8 in.); Album page: 50.9 × 64.5 cm (20 1/16 × 25 7/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
126480
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Trained as an academic painter, Gustave Le Gray achieved numerous technical and compositional innovations in photography. He gained acclaim in London in 1856 for a series of large-scale, technically accomplished seascapes made on the Normandy coastline. This photograph belongs to a series made the following year in the Mediterranean coast city of Sète, where Le Gray was on assignment to document a new train station. He positioned himself on the jetty that separated the port from the sea to make ...
About the Artist
Gustave Le Gray · 1820–1884
Gustave Le Gray, born on August 30, 1820, in Villiers-le-Bel near Paris to a prosperous merchant family, pursued his artistic ambitions against his parents' wishes for a legal career. As an only child, he trained as a painter in the studios of François-Édouard Picot and Paul Delaroche at the École des Beaux-Arts, exhibiting at the Paris Salons in 1848 and 1853. In 1844, he married Palmira Leonardi...