Artwork Page for View of Ste-Adrese Beach with the Dumont Baths

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View of Ste-Adrese Beach with the Dumont Baths

1856

Gustave Le Gray

(French, 1820–1884)
Culture
France, 19th century
Medium
albumen print from collodion negative
Measurements
Image: 30.8 x 39.1 cm (12 1/8 x 15 3/8 in.); Paper: 30.8 x 39.1 cm (12 1/8 x 15 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg 2022.35
Public Domain
You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

Claude Monet painted this same beach, but his works avoid precisely what Gustave Le Gray’s camera reveals.

Description

One of the pioneering masters of French landscape photography, Gustave Le Gray shows us the bathing establishments and tourist hotels that dominated the waterfront of this town on the coast of Normandy. Monet focused instead on the more picturesque and timeless beach and fishing boats. Le Gray’s image is distinctly rooted in the present—that is, the present of 1856—in a way that seems shockingly modern.
A horizontal albumen print captures a coastal landscape in muted brown tones. Boxy wooden huts line a pebbled beach on the left, where tiny figures stand as dark silhouettes. On the right, a dirt path passes a lattice fence and signpost. A massive, grassy cliff curves along the shoreline, its steep face textured with dark patches of vegetation. Smooth water meets the shore under a vast, pale sky filling the frame's upper half.

View of Ste-Adrese Beach with the Dumont Baths

1856

Gustave Le Gray

(French, 1820–1884)
France, 19th century

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