An amateur painter and wife of artist Ernest Hébert, twice director of the French Academy in Rome, Gabrielle Hébert (1853–1934) began an intensive and impassioned photographic practice at the Villa Medici in 1888. Like artists and writers such as Henri Rivière, Maurice Denis, or Émile Zola, who in the late 19th century embraced photography to document domestic life, Gabrielle developed a private, emotionally charged approach to the medium — made possible by the technical and aesthetic revolution of instantaneous photography.
She abruptly ceased her work twenty years later, in La Tronche, following the death of the man she idolised (nearly forty years her senior) and whose legacy she largely helped to preserve by supporting the creation of two monographic museums: one in La Tronche (1934) and the other in Paris (1978).
At the Villa Medici, as the First Lady of a prestigious cultural institution, Gabrielle hosted receptions and welcomed the visiting elite. Yet she quickly broke away from this conventional role: in the summer of 1888, she acquired a camera, took lessons with a Roman professional, and, together with resident painter Alexis Axilette, set up a darkroom to develop glass negatives, print, and retouch her photographs.
This marked the beginning of an impressive output of nearly 2,000 photographs.
“Je photo”, “Je photographie” / “I photo”, “I photograph”: not a day went by without her recording in her diary that she had taken new images.
Developed in partnership with the Musée Hébert in La Tronche (Isère), where it will be exhibited in spring 2026, the show will also be presented at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici in spring 2027. Marie Robert, the exhibition curator, was hosted at the Villa Medici as part of a joint residency with the Musée d’Orsay, undertaking a year-long research project in the history of photography."
Musée d'Orsay
Located in the heart of Paris in the former Orsay railway station, the Musée d’Orsay holds the world’s largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.
Reflecting Western artistic creation from 1848 to 1914, its collections encompass all forms of expression — from painting to architecture, as well as sculpture, decorative arts, and photography.
The museum brings together many of the most renowned artists: Monet, Degas, Manet, Van Gogh, along with Bonheur, Cassatt, and pioneering photographers such as Nadar, Cameron, Le Gray, and Hawarden.