Gustave Le Gray was born in 1820 in Villiers-le-Bel, Val-d'Oise. He was originally trained as a painter, studying under François-Édouard Picot and Paul Delaroche. He even exhibited at the salon in 1848 and 1853. He then crossed over to photography in the early years of its development.

He made his first daguerreotypes by 1847. His early photographs included portraits; scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest; and buildings such as châteaux of the Loire Valley.

He taught photography to students such as Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, and Maxime Du Camp. In 1851 he became one of the first five photographers hired for the Missions Héliographiques to document French monuments and buildings. In that same year he helped found the Société Héliographique, the "first photographic organization in the world". Le Gray published a treatise on photography, which went through four editions, in 1850, 1851, 1852, and 1854.

In 1855 Le Gray opened a "lavishly furnished" studio. At that time, becoming progressively the official photographer of Napoleon III, he became a successful portraitist. His most famous work dates from this period, 1856 to 1858, especially his seascapes. The studio was a fancy place, but in spite of his artistic success the business was poorly managed and ran into debts. He therefore "closed his studio, abandoned his wife and children, and fled the country to escape his creditors".

He began to tour the Mediterranean in 1860 with the writer Alexandre Dumas, père. They crossed the path of Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Dumas enthusiastically joined the revolutionnary forces with his groupmates. His striking pictures of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Palermo under Sicilian bombing became instantly famous throughout Europe at the same time than their subjects. Dumas abandoned Le Gray and the other travellers in Malta due to a conflict about a woman. Le Gray went to Lebanon, then Syria where he covered the movements of the French army for a magazine in 1861. Harmed, he took a halt there before heading to Egypt. In Alexandria he photogaphed Henri d'Artois and the future Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and wrote to Nadar while sending pictures. He established himself in Cairo in 1864 where he remained about 20 years, earning an humble life as a professor of drawing, while still having a small photography shop. He sent pictures to the universal exhibition in 1867 but it did not really caught any attention. He had commands from the vice-king Ismail Pasha. From this late period only remain a mere 50 pictures, some of them as beautiful as usual. He probably died in 1884 in Cairo.

His technical innovations included:

• Improvements on paper negatives, specifically waxing them before exposure "making the paper more receptive to fine detail".
• A collodion process published in 1850 but which was "theoretical at best". The invention of the wet collodion method to produce a negative on a glass plate is now credited to Frederick Scott Archer who published his process in 1851.
• Combination printing, creating seascapes by using one negative for the water and one negative for the sky at a time where it was impossible to have at the same time the sky and the sea on a picture due to the too extreme luminosity range.

Le Gray documented French monuments on a mission for the French government.He was a successful portrait photographer, capturing figures such as Napoleon III and Edward VII of the United Kingdom.He also became famous for his seascapes, or marine.From his twenty years in Cairo we have very few works.

World records for most expensive photograph sold at auction, 1999-2003

In October 1999, Sotheby's sold a Le Gray albumen print "Beech Tree, Fontainebleau" for £419,500, which was a world record for most expensive single photograph ever sold at auction, to an anonymous buyer. Later that day at the same auction, however, an albumen print of "Grande Vague, Sète" ("The Big Wave at Sète," "The Great Wave, Sète") also by Le Gray was sold for a new world record price of £507,500 or $840,370 to "the same anonymous buyer" who was later revealed to be Sheik Saud Al-Thani of Qatar. The record stood until May 2003 when Al-Thani purchased a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey for £565,250 or $922,488.

Books

• Le Gray, Gustave (translated by Thomas Cousins). A practical treatise on photography, upon paper and glass. London : T. & R. Willats, 1850.
• Le Gray, Gustave. Photographic manipulation: the waxed paper process of Gustave Le Gray. Translated from the French. London: George Knight and Sons, 1853.