At Orsay, Gustave Le Gray appears first as a painter
· BehindLines newsroom
The Musée d'Orsay opens a small display on Gustave Le Gray on 10 November 2026, on view until 7 February 2027 in room 8 c, on level 0. Titled "Gustave Le Gray. Peintre photographe" (painter-photographer), it is curated by Thomas Galifot, according to the listing published by Unidivers. It does not claim to be a full retrospective: it shows the range of an artist who was at once a painter, a researcher and a teacher, and presents recent acquisitions, some never before shown to the public.
A painting pre-empted in 2022
Among the museum's recent acquisitions is a painting, the Portrait de Mme G.L., dated 1853. According to The Art Newspaper France, this oil on canvas measuring 125 x 95 cm had been shown at the Salon that same year and depicts the photographer's wife, Palmira Madeline Gertrude Leonardi. It was discovered by the auctioneer Marc Labarbe and sold at auction in Toulouse on 17 November 2022; the Musée d'Orsay acquired it by pre-emption. Unidivers adds that it is the first Le Gray painting to enter a French public collection.
The seascapes, his best-known work
Unidivers names La Grande Vague, Sète (1857) as the emblematic work among his seascapes, printed from two separate negatives. Born in 1820 in Villiers-le-Bel, the artist trained as a painter under Paul Delaroche and argued that photography is an art in which framing, pose and light are the author's choices. His seascapes of 1856 to 1858 remain his best-known work: to balance sky and sea, he combined two negatives on a single print.
A career that ends in Egypt
Unidivers recalls his role in the 1851 Mission héliographique, the success and then the difficulties of his studio on the boulevard des Capucines, its dissolution in 1860 and his departure from France, notably aboard Alexandre Dumas's schooner. He then photographed Italy, settled in Egypt and died in Cairo in 1884.
An event within the bicentenary of photography
The show falls within the bicentenary of photography, running from 2026 to 2027. Orsay had already devoted an exhibition to Le Gray in 1988, and the BnF a retrospective in 2002. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, with a late opening on Thursday, and closed on Monday; prices and bookings should be checked on the museum's website.