View of Ste-Adrese Beach with the Dumont Baths

One of the pioneering masters of French landscape photography, Gustave Le Gray shows us the bathing establishments and tourist hotels that dominated the waterfront of this town on the coast of Normandy. Monet focused instead on the more picturesque and timeless beach and fishing boats. Le Gray’s image is distinctly rooted in the present—that is, the present of 1856—in a way that seems shockingly modern.