The Breaking Wave

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Artist: Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820–1884)
Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negatives
Size: Image: 41.4 × 33.5 cm (16 5/16 × 13 3/16 in.)
Culture: French
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Around 1855 Gustave Le Gray began to make a series of seascapes and maritime studies that proved to be very popular and financially profitable. Interestingly, he first exhibited them in December 1856 at the Photographic Society in London. This speaks to the transnational fascination in photography that existed shortly after the invention of the medium. This view was made at Sète, a Mediterranean port in southern France (southwest of Montpellier). It was taken from roughly the same position on the bank as Le Grande Vague, Sète (The Great Wave, Sète) (84.XM.637.1). This print's vertical format, the only one among Le Gray's many seascapes, emphasizes the boats' blowing sails.

Capturing motion, such as a bobbing boat or waves breaking on the rocks, was still a great challenge to photographers, but Le Gray was an indomitable innovator whose technical improvements to the medium shortened his exposure times. Balancing the different light intensities of the sea and sky in one simultaneous exposure was not easily solved. If he exposed the negative so that the sea was rendered clearly, the sky would be so overexposed as to appear empty.

If he exposed for the sky, the sea and shore would appear only as silhouettes. Le Gray surmounted this dilemma for this composition and others by montaging several paper or glass plate negatives with different exposures. He expertly matched up the negatives so that it is very difficult to detect the "seams." In this particular image, the tones of the sea and land take precedence over a more muted sky.

Adapted from getty.edu, Interpretive Content Department, 2008.

For more information about the author and this piece, see:

Aubanas, Sylvie. Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002.

Parry Janis, Eugenia. The Photography of Gustave Le Gray. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago and The University of Chicago, 1987.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.