A Young Painter-Photographer Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) is a central figure in 19th century photography.   A contemporary of photographers like Nadar, Charles Nègre or Henri Le Secq, he began his career training as a painter. Thanks to his considerable mastery of photographic techniques, he perfected two major inventions: the collodion glass negative in 1850, and the dry wax paper negative in 1851.   With a feeling for composition inherited from painting, he approached numerous subjects: portraits, architectural views,.... ...landscapes, nudes, reproductions of art works. In 1849, he opened a studio in Montmartre where he worked and received his students, all coming from the aristocracy or the intellectual and artistic élite. Inventory of French Monuments In the Spring of 1851, he was chosen by the Historical Monuments Commission to participate in the heliography mission entrusted with the task of making a vast inventory of the monuments of France.   With his friend Mestral, he brought back more than six hundred dry wax paper negatives.       The two young artists, not considering their assignment as a simple task of photographic documentation, selected perspectives and framed off their subjects in such a way as to produce works able to stand alone. The beauty and the variety of the colours of the prints won them unanimous admiration on their return. Fontainebleau Forest     Fleeing the cholera epidemic which was ravaging Paris, Le Gray, like many artists, sought refuge in Fontainebleau Forest.   His wide angle photographs of landscapes were made with paper negatives.     In their wake, follow portraits of trees, studies of light, as well as of forms and textures which, thanks to the use of glass negatives, are of remarkable precision. Through his manipulation of the negatives, the photographer recreated in his studio a very personal vision of Nature.