LE GRAY Gustave (Villiers-le-Bel 1820 † 1884 Cairo; MESTRAL Auguste (Rans 1812 † 1884). [Self-portrait of Gustave Le Gray] 1851. Salted paper print from a paper negative, mounted on heavy cream wove paper. Numbered "540" in the negative in the upper left corner. Vices clearly visible at the lower left edge, and at the upper right edge. 338 x 243 mm [450 x 314]. Large missing foot, reaching the tip of the photographer's jacket. In 1851, Gustave Le Gray was selected, along with Hippolyte Bayard, Henri Le Secq, Édouard Baldus and Auguste Mestral, his pupil, to take part in the Heliographic Mission, in charge of inventorying the monuments of the national territory. In addition to commissioned photographs, the artists took personal photos. Our self-portrait is one of them: dressed in an elegant black city suit, the Gray poses under a Gothic arch in the cloister of the abbey church of Sainte-Marie in Arles-sur-Tech, in the Pyrénées-Orientales. Second known proof. (A first proof was presented at Pierre Bergé & Associés on March 18, 2015).