Mediterranean with Mount Agde
1857
Medium
Albumen silver print from two glass negatives
Dimensions
31.8 x 40.9 cm. (12 1/2 x 16 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1996
Accession Number
1996.99.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Mediterranean with Mountde**, captured by Gustave Le Gray in1857, exemplifies the golden age of early photography. Le Gray, a pioneering French and a leader in the Romantic movement, ventured to the Mediterranean coast near Agde, France, to document the sublime interplay of sea and sky. This albumen silver print, measuring 31.8 x 40.9 cm, is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photographs Department, acquired through the Joseph Pulitzer Bequest in 1996. What makes this seascape revolutionary is Le Gray's innovative technique: printing from *two glass negatives*—one exposing the lumin...
About the Artist
Gustave Le Gray · 1820–1884
Gustave Le Gray, born on August 30, 1820, in Villiers-le-Bel near Paris to a prosperous merchant family, pursued his artistic ambitions against his parents' wishes for a legal career. As an only child, he trained as a painter in the studios of François-Édouard Picot and Paul Delaroche at the École des Beaux-Arts, exhibiting at the Paris Salons in 1848 and 1853. In 1844, he married Palmira Leonardi...