A print of “La Grande vague”, a photograph taken in Sète by Gustave Le Gray, was sold for… €95,000

The photographs of Cet (spelling before 1928) dating from 1857, signed Gustave Le Gray, are definitely popular this November. While, on Friday November 8, one of his photos representing the port sold for €12,000, the same day, a print of his famous Great wave was sold for €95,000 during an auction organized by Yann Le Mouel. A price “excluding costs”, would like to clarify the expert Charlotte Barthélemy. “With the costs, we reach €118,750. We are very satisfied,” she would like to add, specifying only that the buyer is a French collector. This photograph belonged to a private collector who acquired it in the years 1983-1985 from François Pouaux, a major French collector.

“Almost original” colors

Its estimate between €100,000 and €120,000 is explained in particular by its good state of conservation, assures Charlotte Barthélemy: “The colors were almost original. Its previous owner kept it in a box all these years and would bring it out into the light on very rare occasions.” Other prints of the same photograph were sold for €18,700 by Sotheby’s in 2017 or even for €60,000 in 2011 by the same famous auction house. “It’s the state of conservation that makes the price increase or not”specifies the photography expert.

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“It’s a bit like the ancestor of Photoshop”: the little stories behind the photo of the “Great Wave” of Sète

The Great Wavewhich represents the sky, the waves and part of the Sète breakwater, is considered the first photomontage in the history of photography. Le Gray succeeded, unlike his contemporaries, in exposing the landscape and the sky in the same photograph by printing two negatives on the same sheet of paper, one for the sea and the other for the sky. The image quickly caused a sensation. In 1999, this navy reached the record of 5.5 million francs (or approximately €800,000) during its auction in London. A craze which can be explained, at the time, by the fact that this sale “was the first dedicated to photography”, assures Charlotte Barthélemy.

Prints in Orsay, at Moma…

Today, according to the latter, these kinds of photos could no longer be sold for such a sum. Notably because many cultural institutions, such as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris or the Metropolitan and the Moma in New York, already have one of his prints.“There are still private collectors who could raise the price to €300,000”indicates Ms. Barthélemy. Enough to suggest a bright future for this photograph taken in Sète in 1857, when Le Gray immortalized the new Bordeaux-Toulouse railway line whose terminus was at… This.