836
remainder of his life, living at times in Alexandria and
in Cairo.
He became a tutor in drawing and painting, and the
last recorded reference to him working in photography is
dated 1869. After that time, he slipped off the European
photographic stage into relatively obscurity, although
well respected in Cairo. He is believed to have died
there in 1882.
John Hannavy
Biography
Jean Baptiste Gustave Le Gray, or Legray as he some-
times styled it, was born on August 20, 1820, the son
of Jean Martin Legray and Catherine Gay, at Villiers-
le-Bel, France. From about 1839 until 1843, he studied
drawing and painting in Paris, before travelling to
Switzerland and Italy where he met and married Palmyra
Leonardi in 1844. Their fi rst daughter, Elvira born in
1845, lived less than a year, and her name was given to
their second born the following year. She died before she
was three years of age, probably a victim of cholera. A
further daughter and a son were born in the mid 1850s,
but by 1865 only one child was apparently still alive,
living with Le Gray’s estranged and near-destitute wife
in Marseilles. In that year, he travelled to Rome to meet
with his wife, in the hope that his fi nancial diffi culties in
France might permit a return, but it was not to be. Hope-
ful of returning to France to resume his photographic
career, he had retained his membership of the Société
Française de la Photographie until at least 1863.
Le Gray’s death—in Egypt in 1882—was reported
by Nadar, but no formal confi rmation of the date has yet
been discovered. Nadar reported that Le Gray suffered
a broken arm after a riding accident, and that “il mourut
vers 1882 dans une détresse assurément imméritée.”
See also: Delaroche, Paul; Le Secq, Henri (Jean-
Louis Henri Le Secq des Tournelles); Arago,
François Jean Dominique; Talbot, William Henry
Fox ; Calotype and Talbotype; Collodion; Waxed
Paper Negative Processes; Société Héliographique;
Baldus, Édouard; Bayard, Hippolyte; Niépce de
Saint-Victor, Claude Félix Abel; Nadar (Gaspard-
Félix Tournachon); and Bisson, Louis-Auguste and
Auguste-Rosalie.
Further Reading
Cava, Paul, “Early Landscapes by Gustave le Gray” in History
of Photography 1978, XX–XX.
Hannavy, John, The Waxed Paper Process in Great Britain
1851–65, unpublished PhD Thesis, London: Council for
National Academic Awards, 1984.
Jacobson, Ken, The Lovely Sea-View, Petches Bridge: Ken &
Jenny Jacobson, 2001.
Jammes, André, and Janis, Eugenia Parry, The Art of French
Calotype, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Janis, Eugenia Parry, The Photography of Gustave le Gray, Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Le Gray, Gustave, Traité Pratique de Photographie Sur Papier
et Sur Verre, Paris: Germer Ballière, 1850.
Le Gray, Gustave, A Practical Treatise on Photography upon
Paper and Glass, London: T&R Willats, 1850.
Le Gray, Gustave, “Note sur un nouveau mode de préparation
du papier photographique négatif” in Comptes Rendus, Paris:
Académie des Sciences, 1851, 23, 643–644.
Le Gray, Gustave, Nouveau Traité Theoretique et Pratique de
Photographie sur Papier et sur Verre Paris: Lerebours et
Secretan, 1852.
Le Gray, Gustave, Plain Directions for Obtaining Photographic
Pictures, London: T&R Willats, 1852.
Le Gray, Gustave, Plain Directions for Obtaining Photographic
Pictures, London: Richard Willats, 1853.
Ramstedt, Nils, The Photographs of Gustave le Gray, PhD thesis,
University of California at Santa Barbara, 1977.LE PRINCE, LOUIS AIMÉ AUGUSTIN
(1841–c. 1890)
Son of a major in the French artillery, young Le Prince’s
interest in photography was perhaps spurred by a fam-
ily friend, L.J.M. Daguerre. A surviving daguerreotype
shows him as a young boy, with his parents and brother.
After college at Bourges and Paris, Le Prince did post-
graduate work in chemistry at Leipzig, Germany. He
studied art, and specialised in the painting and fi ring
of art pottery. Invited to Leeds, England, by old school
friend John R Whitley, he stayed and joined the fi rm of
Whitley brothers, brass founders, and in 1869 married
Miss Lizzie Whitley, who had trained at the famous
French pottery at Sevres. During the Franco-Pussian war
he survived the Seige of Paris as an offi cer of volunteers,
and on his return to England the Le Princes set up a
school of applied art in Park Square, Leeds.
Le Prince carried out photography on metal and
pottery, and his portraits of Queen Victoria and Prime
Minister Gladstone were placed in the foundation stone
of Cleopatra’s Needle in London.
In 1888 Le Prince went to the United States on a
business venture but this failed. He became manager of
a group of artists who made large circular panoramas
in New York, Washington, and Chicago. A 10th-scale
mock-up sketch of the scene was “squared up” and each
square photographed. Lantern slides of the drawings
were then projected onto the huge panoramic canvases
as a painting guide. These giant vistas were visually
impressive but the action scenes they depicted lacked
movement, which may have given Le Prince the idea
for developing moving “panoramic views.” Soon after-
wards he started experimental work on moving picture
machines in the workshops of the New York Institute for
the Deaf, where his wife taught; and in 1886 he applied
for an American patent for a machine using one or more