On view
Photography
Brig on the Water,
1856
Gustave Le Gray, 1820–1882; born Villiers-le-Bel, France; died Cairo, Egypt; active Paris and Cairo
x1985-33
Early photographic paper was coated with emulsions that were not evenly sensitive to all colors of light, making it nearly impossible to capture the details of the landscape and the sky in a single exposure. While most nineteenth-century photographs taken outdoors captured only the scene on land, leaving the sky a blank white expanse, Le Gray successfully created a series of seascapes by printing skies from one negative and landscapes from another. But in Brig on the Water, he offers a simpler, more poetic solution—he uses this uneven sensitivity to his advantage. This image is derived from a single negative that is exposed for the sky. The result is an evocative maritime nocturne.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Brig on the Water
Dates
1856
Maker
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
image: 29.4 × 39.9 cm (11 9/16 × 15 11/16 in.)
sheet: 44.2 × 54.4 cm (17 3/8 × 21 7/16 in.)
mat: 50.8 × 61 cm (20 × 24 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, John Maclean Magie, Class of 1892, and Gertrude Magie Fund
Object Number
x1985-33
Place Made
Europe, France
Inscription
Inscribed in graphite, verso: In Conte Alfred Odar de Pariguy
Printed on sheet: 59
Culture
Techniques
The artist. Acquired by Robert Koch, Inc., Berkeley, CA, after 1969; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 1985.
- Nils Ramsteldt, "An Album of Seascapes by Gustave Le Gray" History of Photography 4, no. 2 (April 1980): 121-137., p. 129 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 248 (illus.)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1985," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 45, no. 1 (1986): p.16–42, p. 42 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 263 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 315
