The French and English Fleets, Cherbourg
Gustave Le Gray French
Not on view
Le Gray emerged around 1850 as the most important member of a group of French artists that elected photography as an alternative to painting. His technically superior ability to capture momentary effects of light and atmosphere—in seascapes, landscapes, and architectural views—won him critical praise and prestigious commissions and presaged the concerns and pictorial strategies of the Impressionists a decade later. Le Gray had been photographing the sea for years when he headed to Cherbourg and Brest in August 1858 to record the naval exercises of the mighty French and English fleets. The maritime series shows the artist’s mastery of the landscape even as the seemingly small scale of the very real warships suggests a bit of child’s play with models afloat in a bath.
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