Le Gray, Gustave - Solar Effect in the Clouds - Ocean - photo, art postcard

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^{Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :}

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Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray (French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ɡystav lə gʁɛ]; 30 August 1820 – 30 July 1884)[1] was a French painter, draughtsman, sculptor, print-maker, and photographer. He has been called "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century" because of his technical innovations, his instruction of other noted photographers, and "the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture making."[2] He was an important contributor to the development of the wax paper negative.

Biography
Gustave Le Gray was born on 30 August 1820 in Villiers-le-Bel, Val-d'Oise.[1] He was an only child of a haberdasher.[3] His parents encouraged him to become a solicitor's clerk, [citation needed] but from a young age, he aspired to be an artist. He was originally trained as a painter, studying under François-Édouard Picot and Paul Delaroche. His parents financed a trip to Switzerland and Italy so that he could study art abroad, and he lived in Italy between 1843-1846 and painted portraits and scenes of the countryside. In 1844, he met and married Palmira Maddalena Gertrude Leonardi (born 23 March 1823), a laundress who he had six children with, although only two survived into adulthood.[4]

Le Gray exhibited his paintings at the salon in 1848 and 1853.[1] He then crossed over to photography in the early years of its development.

He made his first daguerreotypes by 1847.[5] His real contributions - artistically and technically - were in the area of paper photography. His early photographs included portraits; scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest; and buildings such as châteaux of the Loire Valley.[5][6]

Self Portrait (circa 1851)
He taught photography to students such as Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, Olympe Aguado, and Maxime Du Camp.[5][7] In 1851, he became one of the first five photographers hired for the Missions Héliographiques to document French monuments and buildings.[6][8] In that same year, he helped found the Société Héliographique, the "first photographic organization in the world."[8] Le Gray published a treatise on photography, which went through four editions, in 1850, 1851, 1852, and 1854.

In 1855, Le Gray opened a "lavishly furnished" studio. At that time, becoming progressively the official photographer of Napoleon III, he became a successful portraitist. His most famous work dates from this period, 1856 to 1858, especially his seascapes. The studio was a fancy place, but in spite of his artistic success, his business was a financial failure: the business was poorly managed and ran into debts.[9] He therefore "closed his studio, abandoned his wife and children, and fled the country to escape his creditors."[5]

He began to tour the Mediterranean in 1860 with the writer Alexandre Dumas, père.[8] They encountered Giuseppe Garibaldi during the trip and Le Gray photographed Garibaldi and Palermo. His striking pictures of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Palermo under Sicilian bombardment became as instantly famous throughout Europe. Dumas abandoned Le Gray and the other travelers in Malta and joined the revolutionary forces as a result of a personal conflict.[10][9] Le Gray went to Lebanon, then Syria where he covered the movements of the French army for a magazine in 1861. Injured, he remained there before heading to Egypt. In Alexandria he photographed Henri d'Artois and the future Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and wrote to Nadar while sending him pictures. In 1862, his wife Leonardi returned to Rome, requesting and receiving 150 francs for financial assistance. In 1863, Leonardi asked Le Gray to provide her with a monthly pension of 50 or 60 francs.

He established himself in Cairo in 1864; earning a modest living as a professor of drawing, while retaining a small photography shop.[8] He sent pictures to the universal exhibition in 1867 but they did not really catch anyone's attention. He received commissions from the vice-king Ismail Pasha. From this late period there remain 50 pictures.

In 1868, a collection of photographic seascapes by Gustave Le Gray was donated by millionaire art collector Chauncy Hare Townshend to the Victoria and Albert Museum. (He had kept them in portfolios along with his watercolors, etchings and engravings; they therefore remained in excellent condition, preserved to museum standards almost since they were made.)[11]

On 16 January 1883, he had a son with the nineteen-year-old Anaïs Candounia. Registration of their sons birth was voided due to lack of proof of Leonardi's death. Le Gray died on 30 July 1884, in Cairo.[1] His only surviving child from his marriage to Leonardi, Alfred, was designated as his heir.