833
he was teaching others. A notable student—who took
lessons from him in 1849—was Maxime du Camp,
probably the fi rst European photographer to travel ex-
tensively in Egypt with a camera in 1850.
Le Gray’s work appeared in France’s fi rst photo-
graphic exhibition—within the Produit de l’Industrie
exhibition in 1849—and those early images, taken in
the Forest of Fontainebleu, won him a bronze medal
at the exhibition. Nine images submitted to the Paris
Salon in the following year were hung in the Graphic
Arts section amongst the work of lithographers, but were
quickly removed and returned to the artist, apparently
being inadmissible.
Le Gray’s confi dence with the technology and chem-
istry of early photography manifested itself in a series
of treatises, the fi rst of which—Traité Pratique de Pho-
tographie Sur Papier et Sur Verre,—was published by
Germer Ballière in Paris in June 1850. He was, by this
time, an ardent promoter of paper negative processes
and in that publication wrote
The future and extensive application of photography will
doubtless be confi ned to the paper process and I cannot
too much engage the amateur to direct his attention and
study to it. (from the English translation, “A Practical Trea-
tise on Photography upon Paper and Glass” translated by
M Cousens, London: T&R Willats, 1850)Despite his advocacy of paper-based photography,
that same treatise offers an intriguing glimpse of Le
Gray’s enthusiasm for experimentation with a range of
processes. In addition to his description of a range of
paper processes, he noted in an appendix that “I am now
making use of the following process on glass: Fluoride
of Potassium or Sodium is dissolved in alcohol of 40 ̊
mixed with sulphuric ether and then saturated with
collodion,” a tantalising suggestion that he was using
a wet collodion process before Frederick Scott Archer
published his account thereof. Writing in Plain Direc-
tions for Obtaining Photographic Pictures Upon Glass
and Albumenised Paper (Richard Willats, London 1853)
Charles Heisch noted that this was undoubtedly the
fi rst published account of the method, although such a
process had been predicted as early as 1847. Needless
to say, Archer dismissed the Frenchman’s claim because
“he did not give the public the advantage of following
him and that in his work of 1850 the subject is dismissed
in three or four lines (Heisch quoting Archer, 1853).
Le Gray’s acknowledged contribution to the emerg-
ing science of photography was not his prediction of
wet collodion, however, but his widely practised papier
ciré—the Waxed Paper Process, the fi rst photographic
negative material with a surface-coated light sensitive
layer on a fl exible support—announced in 1851 and
arguably prefacing the materials which would dominate
photography throughout the twentieth century. While
Le Gray’s original formulation was ideally suited to
conditions in France, it had to be customised by oth-
ers—including Roger Fenton, William Crookes and Dr.LE GRAY, GUSTAVE
Le Gray, Gustave. Brig on the
Water.
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Gift of A. Hyatt Mayor,
1976 (1976.645.1) Image ©
The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.