# The Great Wave, Sete > Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray - 1857 (exposed April 1857 at Sete; individual prints made over the following years, into the early 1860s) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/gustave-le-gray/le-gray-the-great-wave-sete/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-14 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray - **Date:** 1857 (exposed April 1857 at Sete; individual prints made over the following years, into the early 1860s) - **Medium:** Albumen print from two wet-collodion-on-glass negatives, combination-printed on a single sheet - **Dimensions:** Approximately 34 x 41.5 cm (image), varying by 3-8 mm between documented prints; see technical notes - **Object type:** Photograph - **Period:** French, mid-nineteenth century - **Current location:** This record uses the Metropolitan Museum of Art's print as its reference impression. Other fully documented prints are held by the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Musee d'Orsay, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the George Eastman Museum, among others. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary In April 1857, on the jetty at Sete on the French Mediterranean coast, Gustave Le Gray exposed two glass negatives from the same camera position: one timed for the breaking wave and the stone breakwater, the other for the sky. Wet-collodion emulsion could not hold both together in a single frame, so in the darkroom he combined the two negatives on one sheet of albumen paper. The result, printed and sold under the title Grande Vague, Sete, no. 17 in his own numbering, was received as a technical sensation and a work of real poetic force, and it survives today in at least seven public collections, no two prints from quite the same run.A print from the collection of Andre and Marie-Therese Jammes sold at Sotheby's London on 27 October 1999 for a hammer price of GBP 442,500, GBP 507,500 with premium, then the highest price ever recorded for a single photograph at auction. The buyer was reported in the press, though never confirmed by the saleroom itself, to be Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani of Qatar.Because Le Gray printed this image repeatedly over several years and recycled sky negatives across more than one seascape composition, no single print can stand for all the others, and this record treats the Metropolitan Museum's impression, gift of John Goldsmith Phillips in 1976, as its reference point while cataloguing what is documented about the rest. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **April 1857** Gustave Le Gray `[documented]` (creation) Two wet-collodion glass negatives exposed from the mole Saint-Louis jetty at Sete, one for the sea and breakwater, one for the sky, combined by Le Gray in printing on albumen paper. The exposure is associated with Le Gray's documented visit to Sete around the opening of the Toulouse-Sete railway on 2 April 1857. - **1857-1858** Gustave Le Gray (studio sales and exhibition) `[documented]` (exhibition and critical reception) The critic Marc-Antoine Gaudin, writing in La Lumiere, named Le Gray's 1857-58 seascapes 'the event of the year'. On 25 July 1858 the columnist Henri d'Audigier described this specific view in La Patrie after visiting Le Gray's studio, praising its wave crests and, notably, attributing the effect to a single instantaneous exposure of about 1/20 of a second, unaware of or omitting the combination-printing process that actually produced it. - **1860** Gustave Le Gray & Cie `[documented]` (copyright deposit) Along with 'The Breaking Wave', this was one of only three images Le Gray submitted to the French Ministry of the Interior for copyright protection in 1860, as his photographic company was collapsing into bankruptcy. - **1860-1976** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No ownership record for this specific print, between Le Gray's studio and its entry to the Metropolitan Museum, is given in the sources consulted. John Goldsmith Phillips, curator of Western European Arts at the Museum, is recorded only as the donor in 1976, not as a documented earlier link in an ownership chain. - **1976-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition (gift)) Accessioned as 1976.646, gift of John Goldsmith Phillips. Catalogued as public domain under the Museum's Open Access policy. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1999-10-27** Sotheby's, London: La Photographie, Collection Marie-Therese et Andre Jammes - Estimate: GBP 40,000 - 60,000, now confirmed in the specialist's own words: Philippe Garner, quoted by Liberation's London correspondent the week of the sale, said he had estimated it at 40,000 to 60,000 pounds. - Hammer: Not published; Sotheby's London premium in 1999 was tiered and no source consulted prints the hammer. - With premium: GBP 507,500, premium-inclusive - THIRD CONFIRMATION, contemporary and independent of the two already on the patch of 2026-08-20: Liberation, Paris, 29 October 1999, 'Le Gray, nouveau graal. Une photo de la collection Jammes a depasse les 5 millions', by Francois Sergent, London correspondent, read in full in the in-app browser after a 403 at a plain fetch (rung 1 blocked, rung 3 read; a device-verification interstitial cleared on its own, no login and no consent action). It reports the print 'vendue ... a Londres par Sotheby's au prix de 507 500 livres (plus de 5 millions de francs), un record absolu', the buyer as anonymous and believed American, and the same paper reports the sale's other Le Gray, Hetre, Fontainebleau, at 419,500 pounds. TWO CONFLICTS RECORDED AND NOT ADOPTED: (1) Liberation writes 'vendue mardi', which for an article dated Friday 29 October 1999 is Tuesday 26 October, against the 27 October carried by the De Baecque catalogue bibliography and by iPhotoCentral; the 27th stands until the Sotheby's catalogue is seen. (2) Liberation gives the Beech Tree at GBP 419,500 where iPhotoCentral gives GBP 441,500; that lot is not this object, and the conflict is noted only because the record's former wrong hammer of GBP 442,500 was that lot's figure transposed, and neither press figure supports it. Liberation's buyer speculation (American, perhaps the Getty) contradicts the Al-Thani reports the record already flags as unconfirmed; both remain press speculation and neither is a provenance event. - **not confirmed (viewing dates of 15-16 November given; year not stated on the lot page consulted)** De Baecque et Associes, Lyon: Ancient and Modern Paintings, lot 297 - Estimate: EUR 30,000 - 40,000 - Hammer: EUR 57,000 - With premium: 25% TTC (buyer's premium including tax; approximately EUR 14,250, for a total near EUR 71,250) - A separate, later print of the same photograph, numbered 17 in ink and carrying the 'Gustave Le Gray & Cie' dry stamp and an inventory mark '13,329', described by the auctioneer's cataloguer as an exceptionally fresh impression with only slight sky-area defects. This sale is included to show that prints of this image continue to trade well outside the 1999 record and should not be mistaken for it. ## Open questions - Do all seven or more documented prints of this title share an identical pair of negatives, or did Le Gray combine this sea negative with more than one sky negative across different printing occasions between 1857 and the early 1860s? The sources consulted confirm that he reused sky negatives across compositions in general, but do not settle this for this specific title without direct technical comparison of the prints themselves. - Why does the Museum of Modern Art catalogue its print to 1856, against the 1857 date used by every other institution consulted and tied to the documented April 1857 Sete railway opening? No source found here reconciles the discrepancy. - Was the reported buyer of the 1999 Sotheby's print, Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani of Qatar, ever confirmed as such by Sotheby's itself, or does that identification rest entirely on press reporting? No auction-house statement confirming it was found in this research. - What is the current custodianship of the 1999 record-setting print, within the Qatari state's art holdings, following Sheikh Saud Al-Thani's death in 2014? Trade press describes his broader photography collection as held in storage with no public museum realised; no source locates this specific print. - Does the 'Vistas del Mar' album title used in the Art Institute of Chicago's own catalogue data reflect Le Gray's own naming and numbering of his seascape prints, or is it a later cataloguing convention, possibly reflecting a Spanish-speaking early owner or dealer, applied independently of the French numbering ('no. 17') used by the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Musee d'Orsay and later auction houses? - What is the George Eastman Museum's accession number and acquisition date for its print, beyond its being a gift of Eastman Kodak Company from the former Gabriel Cromer collection? This could not be confirmed from the sources consulted and should be checked directly against the museum's own database. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection catalogue entry for [The Great Wave, Sete], accession 1976.646. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access API record for object 261941. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History essay, 'Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884)'. - [4] J. Paul Getty Museum, collection catalogue entry, 'The Great Wave, Sete', object 62015 / 84.XM.637.1. - [5] J. Paul Getty Museum, collection catalogue entry, 'The Brig', object 62016. - [6] Art Institute of Chicago, collection catalogue entry, 'The Great Wave, Sete', artwork 36848. - [7] Art Institute of Chicago, public API record for artwork 36848. - [8] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, collection catalogue entry, object 142477 (M.2008.40.1284). - [9] Victoria and Albert Museum, collections catalogue entry, item O72699. - [10] Musee d'Orsay, collection catalogue entry, 'Grande vague, Sete - no. 17'. - [11] Bibliotheque nationale de France, Catalogue general, bibliographic record for '[La Grande vague - Sete - No. 17]'. - [12] BnF Essentiels, 'No. 17 - Grande vague, Sete'. - [13] George Eastman Museum, 'Featured Collection: The Gabriel Cromer Collection'. Flagged for direct re-verification; accession number for this print not confirmed. - [14] Wikipedia (French), 'La Grande Vague, Sete'. - [15] Wikipedia (English), 'Gustave Le Gray'. - [16] Young, 'Photography and the Philosophy of Time: On Gustave Le Gray's Great Wave, Sete', Nonsite.org. - [17] Richard Harrington, 'The First HDR Photo: Gustave Le Gray, Two Negatives, and the Problem of Sea and Sky'. - [18] iPhotoCentral newsletter, 'Photography Sale Of The Millenium: Jammes Auction Sale In London Lives Up To The Hype And More!'. - [19] iPhotoCentral newsletter, 'Le Gray Sale Sets 19th-Century Photo Record--Briefly--At Over $1.3 Million to Texas Oil Man' (Rouillac, 2011; a different Le Gray work, cited here as market comparanda only). - [20] De Baecque et Associes, auction lot page, 'Grande Vague, Sete no. 17', lot 297. - [21] Wikidata, 'The Great Wave, Sete', Q3209564. - [22] Wikimedia Commons, Category:La Grande Vague, Sete, and file-level extmetadata for images used in this record's gallery. - [23] Paul Fraser Collectibles, 'The vast and spectacular collections of Sheikh Saud al Thani of Qatar'. - [24] The Art Newspaper, 'Collector interview: Sheikh Saud Al Thani of Qatar' (2004). - [25] PetaPixel, 'Getty's Open Content Program Has 88,000 Images You Can Use for Free', on the CC0 status of Getty Museum collection images generally. - [26] Gustave Le Gray, 'Traite pratique de photographie sur papier et sur verre' (1850), digitized copy. - [27] liberation.fr, web page cited for the Sotheby's sale of 1999-10-27. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.