{
"data": {
"id": 153753,
"accession_number": "1987.54",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "An Effect of the Sun, Normandy, c. 1856. Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820\u20131884). Albumen print from wet collodion negative; image: 32 x 41.8 cm (12 5/8 x 16 7/16 in.); matted: 55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1987.54",
"current_location": null,
"title": "An Effect of the Sun, Normandy",
"creation_date": "c. 1856",
"creation_date_earliest": 1851,
"creation_date_latest": 1861,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "albumen print from wet collodion negative",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "Photography",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 32 x 41.8 cm (12 5/8 x 16 7/16 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.32,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"width": 0.418,
"width_inch": 16,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.559,
"height_inch": 22,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.711,
"width_inch": 28,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in red ink on recto: \"Gustave Le Gray\"; on label on recto: \"All titles Effet du [sic] Soleil Ocean No. 23\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 310231,
"title": "The Year in Review for 1987",
"description": "The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988).",
"opening_date": "1988-02-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311444,
"title": "Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum",
"description": "Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991).",
"opening_date": "1991-06-07T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311875,
"title": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997).",
"opening_date": "1996-11-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 178867,
"title": "Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 26-June 16, 2005).",
"opening_date": "2005-02-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 197576,
"title": "France at the Dawn of Photography",
"description": "France at the Dawn of Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 4, 2009-January 24, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2009-10-04T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Philadelphia Museum of Art, Nov. 17 - Dec. 28, 1969: \"French Primitive Photography.\" Exhibition catalogue p. 47, repr. p. 47.",
"opening_date": "1969-11-17T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, February 24 - April 17, 1988: \"Year in Review 1987,\" CMA Bulletin, 75 (February 1988), p. 67, no. 66, repr. p. 58-59.",
"opening_date": "1988-02-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, June 29 - August 26, 1990: \"The World Seen Anew: English and French Photographs of the 1850's,\" Gallery D, no exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "1990-06-29T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, June 7 - September 8, 1991: \"Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum.\"",
"opening_date": "1991-06-07T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, November 20,1996 - February 2, 1997: \"Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art.\"",
"opening_date": "1997-02-02T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Galeries Mansart and Mazarine, Richelieu, France, March 19 - June 16, 2002: \"Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884.\" Aubenas, Sylvie. Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884 (Gallimard: Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, 2002). (Also exhibited at The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, July 9 - Sept. 29, 2002). Catalogue no. 130. p. 110.",
"opening_date": "2002-03-19T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 26 - June 16, 2005 . \"Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art\".",
"opening_date": "2005-02-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (10/04/2009 - 01/24/2010); \"France at the Dawn of Photography\"",
"opening_date": "2009-10-04T00:00:00"
}
]
},
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"description": "Exploring the dramatic effects of sunlight, clouds, and water, Gustave Le Gray gained immediate recognition for his landmark photographs of the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel taken between 1856 and 1858. At this time photographic emulsions were not equally sensitive to all colors of the spectrum, making it impossible to achieve a proper exposure for both sea and sky in a single image. Thus, for may of his seascapes Le Gray printed two negatives on a single sheet of paper, a technique called combination printing. One negative was taken of the water and the other of the sky. The overlap often apparent in such multiple negative images is not visible in this skillfully executed print.",
"external_resources": {
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"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60757406"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1987.54-an-effect-of-the-sun"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1987.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (February 1988): 30\u201371.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 58; Mentioned: p. 67, no. 66",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25160017"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 221",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.54",
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"date_created": "2005-02-14T17:05:06",
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"creditline": "Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund",
"image_credit": null,
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{
"id": 568,
"description": "Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820\u20131884)",
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"biography": "Gustave Le Gray French, 1820-1884\r\n\r\nA master both technically and aesthetically, Gustave Le Gray (born in Villiers-le-Bel) was one of the most important figures in 19th-century French photography, bringing to the medium artistic integrity and visual imagination. Le Gray, trained as a painter, was exhibiting his work in the Paris Salons in the late 1840s and early 1850s when he became interested in photography. Along with Henri Le Secq and Charles N\u00e8gre, he was a student of Paul Delaroche, a painter of considerable reputation and ability who was one of the first to grasp the importance of photography.\r\n\tIn 1851 Le Gray announced his invention of a waxed paper negative, a significant improvement over earlier paper methods that was later adopted by Louis de Clercq, Dr. August Jakob Lorent, and others. That same year the Commission des Monuments historiques named him as one of five photographers of the Mission h\u00e9liographique, for which he produced well-known studies of army maneuvers at Chalons. Le Gray also worked with Fran\u00e7ois Arago, the scientist and champion of Louis-Jacques-Mand\u00e9 Daguerre, and later proposed a new method of toning prints, among other innovations.\r\n\tLe Gray was perhaps most admired for the effects he achieved with water and sky. To capture the subtle qualities of cloud patterns in some of his seascapes, he employed two negatives to produce the final image. His commissioned studies of historic monuments are classic examples of early architectural photography. In the early 1850s he worked in the Barbizon tradition at Fontainebleau and, in 1860, documented the uprising against Fran\u00e7ois II in Palermo. He was a founding member of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 h\u00e9liographique and the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise de photographie. Despite his influence and artistic success, Le Gray left Paris in 1865 to become a professor of design at the \u00c9cole Polytechnique in Cairo. He died in Egypt. T.W.F.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1820",
"death_year": "1884",
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"legal_status": "accessioned",
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"sortable_date": 1851,
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"date_text": "c. 1856",
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"updated_at": "2026-05-29 07:56:57.466000"
}
}