GUSTAVE LE GRAY

He played a key role among 19th-century practitioners, due as much to his accomplishments and the artistic ambitions he nurtured for the new medium as to his influence as a technician, inventor of major improvements, theoretician and teacher at the origin of one of the first photography schools. Le Gray has been represented in the Musée d’Orsay’s collections since its first acquisition of photographs in 1979, and the institution currently conserves one of the most remarkable ensembles of his output.

Almost forty years after the first major exhibition in France devoted to Le Gray, held at the Musée d’Orsay in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago (1988), and over twenty years after the landmark retrospective held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (2002), this presentation will be an occasion to rediscover the artist and his multidisciplinary talent. Several recent acquisitions, major works whose existence had been unknown until they appeared on the market, will be put back in the context of their creation and revealed to the public for the first time.

This event has been labeled “Bicentennial of Photography 2026-2027” by the Ministry of Culture and is included in its official programming.