The Port and City of Sète-Mediterranean (Port et Ville de Sète-Mediterranée)

Photography and Media

1857

Gustave Le Gray
French, 1820–1884

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 this photograph of the two-stacked steamship Saïd leading other vessels at anchor in the harbor. Another version of the same scene, made from the city side of the harbor, was reproduced as an engraving and published in Le Monde illustré in May of 1857.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Gustave Le Gray
Title: The Port and City of Sète-Mediterranean (Port et Ville de Sète-Mediterranée)
Place: France (Artist's nationality)
Date: Made 1857
Medium: Albumen print, 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"; inscribed recto on album page, lower left, in brown ink: "[illegible/cut off]"; printed recto, on paper affixed to album page, lower right, in black ink: "PORT et VILLE de CETTE_Médit [erranée/cut off]; unmarked verso
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.)
Credit Line: Hugh Edwards Fund
Reference Number: 1971.577.13
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/126480/manifest.json

Janis, Eugenia Parry. 1987. “The Photography of Gustave Le Gray.” Exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago/University of Chicago Press. p. 64, pl. 5.

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 3, 2012–May 6, 2013.

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