L'impératrice Eugénie en prière

Gustave Le Gray

1856 · Albumen silver print from a collodion glass negative · Photographs

Le Gray's photograph of Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III, was apparently intended as an aid to Thomas Couture for a large (and never completed) painting commemorating the baptism of Eugénie's son, the prince imperial. Le Gray, or perhaps Couture himself, posed the empress kneeling at a prie-dieu in the château at Saint-Cloud, elegantly trimmed in white tulle, and set against a dark ground; she plays perfectly her public and private roles, dignified and contemplative, imperial and maternal, in a private space amid imagined ceremony.

Artist

Gustave Le Gray

Date

1856

Medium

Albumen silver print from a collodion glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005