Gustave Gray

“I express the wish that photography
instead of falling into the field from industry, of the trade,
returns in that of Article”

Gustave Gray (August 30th 1820 - July 29th 1884) is a Photographe French.

Inventor and artist, it is characterized by its control from the photographic technique, on the level of the composition as on the level of the lumière.

Biography

Initially intended to become clerk of notary, Gustave Gray succeeds in convincing its family which her future is in painting. In 1842, it follows the teaching of Paul Delaroche to the School of the fine arts, it meets there his/her friends Henri Secq, Charles Nègre and Jean-Leon Gérôme. As of 1843 Paul Delaroche is constrained to close its workshop, its decision to leave for Italy influences its pupils. Gray, then Gérôme and Secq is found there.

Although Gray continued to paint (it exposes to the living rooms of 1848 and 1853), its tables did not hold the attention. It is indeed in the Photographie that its reputation is established and that it receives its first orders.

In 1850, it develops the negative one on glass with the wet Collodion (which will be improved by Frederick Scott Archer), then, the following year, the negative one on dry waxed paper.

1851 is a date hinge for photography and Gustave Gray. He is founding member of the heliographic Company (which will become then the French company of photography). He is in parallel one of the five photographers selected by the commission of the historic buildings, to achieve what will be named the heliographic Mission (Gray, Edouard Baldus, Mestral, Henri Secq, Hippolyte Bayard). The purpose of this mission is the census of the monuments of the national territory, and the occasion offers to him to try out with large scales its new processes and to prove its virtuosity while taking to 30 stereotypes in only one day. Gray, Mestral and Secq will use negative waxed paper, Baldus negative paper gelatin and Bayard negative albuminous glass. Gray and Mestral, raise of this last, will accomplish the voyage besides together.

Its most famous works go back to 1856 with 1858. On the coasts Norman, Mediterranean and Breton, it carries out a series of Marines of a great beauty. It uses the technique brought back ciels to give to the landscape the dramatic intensity which it wishes. At that time, it was difficult, because of the differences in luminosity, to reproduce sky and landscape simultaneously. Gray circumvents this problem by carrying out pullings in two times, using two negative (one for the landscape, the other then for the sky, from where the term of sky brought back ).

The official photographer

At that time, he is then a recognized portraitist, and becomes gradually the official photographer of the imperial family. For Napoleon III, photography becomes average a rapid to diffuse the image of a modern sovereign. Gustave Gray is in particular invited to the camp of Châlons-sur-Marne from which it draws a report in which it manages to reconcile its subject with a worked composition.

The voyage in the East

But the creditors of Gray impatientent awaited financial repercussions of its successes and this one must close its workshop in 1860, victim of its approximate management.
It is the moment that Alexandre Dumas chooses to carry out her dream of voyage in the East. Gustave Gray jumps on the occasion while embarking with the writer. Hardly the started voyage, the catch of Palermo by Giuseppe Garibaldi decides Dumas to join the revolutionists and offers to Gray the occasion to illustrate the disasters caused by the bombardments of the sicilian army. The photographs show a city without life, become quiet. The photograph of Garibaldi as a romantic revolutionist will make the turn of Europe quickly.
The voyage begins again but with Malta, Dumas gets rid of her travelling companions of which Gray. Without incomes, they propose their services with the illustrated Monde which sends them in Syria to follow a detachment of the army française.
Gray, casualty, benefit from his convalescence to settle a workshop.

In 1861, it joined Alexandria (photographs of Henri d' Artois as well as future Edouard VII of the United Kingdom) from where it writes with Nadar and still sends photographs but to Paris, they are especially its creditors and a woman with which it is quite glad to be distant which maintain its memory.

In 1864, it leaves a little more Europe by settling in Cairo where it saw course of drawings and protection of Ismaïl Pasha. During twenty last years of its life, it continues to photograph. In 1867, at the time of the World Fair, it sends photographs in the general indifference. With its death in 1884, its works are dispersed by his/her son; many photographs were not found yet.

Influences

Gustave Gray had a great influence on the evolution of photography towards a sixth Art . Alexandre Dumas said of him: “I understood that the photographer as Gray is at the same time an artist and a scientist”.

By publishing treaties in 1850, 1851, 1852 and 1854 (this last being a synthesis of its three preceding handbooks) in which it explains its technical inventions: the negative one on glass (in 1851, which will be improved by Scott Archer), the negative one on dry waxed paper (in 1852) and of new methods of fixation of positive pullings (in 1852).

By taking part in the foundation of the heliographic Company and the newspaper the Light in 1851, as well as French company of photography in 1854.

It maintains the tradition of the workshop of artist by making his workshops, street of Richelieu then boulevard of the Nasturtiums, in Paris, places of training for the pupils but also of the living rooms open to the artistic medium, in which will follow one another of many pupils and visitors. Let us quote: Leon de Laborde and Maxime of the Camp, Nieuwerkerke (superintendent of the Art schools), Alexandre Dumas, Victor Cousin, Henri Secq, Charles Nègre, Mestral, Eugene Dien, Eugene Piot, Victor Places, Olympe Aguado, Edouard and Benjamin Delessert, John B. Greene, Felix April, Emmanuel Peccarère, Leon Méhédin, the painter Lodoïsch Crette Romet, Adrien Tournachon and its brother Nadar. It is the first time that a teaching of the photography of this width takes place.

See too

Random links: