Guay was a student of and of
Jean-Léon Gerôme, from whom he learned the exacting skills of French
Academic painting. In 1873, at the age of 24, he had a painting accepted for exhibition at the annual
Paris Salon, the traditional starting point for the career of a French artist of the 19th century; the work was
Ulysse suspendu sur le gouffre de Charybde, inspired by a passage in
Homer's
Odyssey. (In 1909, Guay gifted the painting to the City of Paris, which agreed to exhibit it at the
Lycée Turgot, where Guay was a professor.) His Academic training is evident in his meticulously detailed and scrupulously finished early works which treat mythological and religious subjects, including
Latone et les paysans (1877), ''Le Lévite d'Ephraim
(1878), and Le Tullianum pendant la persécution; martyre de Sainte Pauline'' (1880). By 1877 some of his paintings had made their way to San Francisco, where the art dealers Snow and May sold two of his works at auction,
The Anglers and
A Fishing Party. Another work by Guay created a sensation in San Francisco at the 15th
Mechanics' Fair of 1880.
The Awakening showed a nude woman, life-size, lying on her side and just waking up. The figure was gracefully posed, the drawing faultless, the flesh tones soft and lucid. In short, wrote the
Californian, it was "a splendid study of the female form." Even so, the moralists had reservations.…The nude in
The Awakening was too realistic, "the work of a
Zola." She was too contemporary, a modern-day woman, "the very embodiment of flesh, blood, and passion," portrayed after what some said was surely a night of debauchery.…Alarmed, the fair managers hung an unsightly red drapery over the offending nude as they tried to decide what to do next.…Gallery visitors, young and old, took to peeping behind the drapery [which] kept falling down, so a policeman was posted next to the painting to ensure public safety until…a vote would be taken among gallery visitors to determine whether
The Awakening should stay or go. On the day of the vote…it soon became obvious that
The Awakening had more admirers than adversaries. "Speaking in a general way," wrote the
Chronicle the next day, "all the good-natured, sleek and healthy people appeared to be in favor of allowing the picture to remain and all the dyspeptic and melancholy ones determined to have it removed." On the day of the vote, 12,808 people bought tickets to the fair. The vote to unveil
The Awakening prevailed in a landslide. Guay's interest in the female nude, often seen from the back, continued throughout his career.
Farniente (Lazing), from 1911, shows a sleeping nude, and in 1912, his submission to the
Salon was simply titled
Nu (Nude); both images were issued as souvenir postcards, presumably acceptable for delivery in the French post. The whereabouts of a number of his paintings are unknown. His
Cosette of 1882, depicting the character from
Les Misérables, is known today only from reproductions, one of which, an albumen print now at the
Maison de Victor Hugo, he inscribed to the author:
"A Victor Hugo, notre illustre poète national, Hommage de son grand admirateur, Gabriel Guay." His
genre painting ''En l'absence du maître'' (While the Master's Away) of 1877 is also known only from reproductions, including a full-page engraving published in ''L'illustration: journal universel''. Gabriel Guay Fishing 1876 version 2.tif|
A Fishing Party, 1876 Gabriel Guay--En l'absence du maître--1877 (cropped).tif|''En l'absence du maître'', 1877 Latone et les paysans Gabriel Guay.jpeg|
Latone et les paysans, 1877 Guay - Le Lévite d'Ephraïm - 1878.png|''Le Lévite d'Ephraïm'', 1878 Guay--Le Tullianum--Sainte Pauline--1880--Museo del Palacio Vergara.jpg|
Le Tullianum, 1880 Gabriel Guay--Cosette--dedicated to Hugo (cropped).tif|
Cosette, 1882 Gabriel Guay--Death of Jezabel--1888 (cropped).png|
La mort de Jézabel, 1888 Gabriel Guay--Farniente--Lazing--Paris Salon of 1911 (cropped).jpg|
Farniente, 1911 Gabriel Guay--Nude--1912.jpg|
Nu, 1912 At least one of his paintings is known to have been destroyed in the carnage of
World War II:
La mort de Jézabel, exhibited at the Salon of 1888, where it inspired the critic
Henry Houssaye to write a vivid description:On the hard slabs, at the foot of a massive square tower covered at its base with blue tiles, lies with its head in front and arms outstretched the corpse of the Queen of Israel. In Jezebel's supreme struggle with her murderers, her dark green dress of shimmering velvet was torn and half-destroyed. Her beautiful white body is naked above the belt, and her red hair spreads over the granite like a flood of molten copper. On the left, in the crepuscular twilight, a street recedes in perspective, creating a singular optical illusion. Packs of carnivorous dogs approach, mouths gaping and eyes ablaze. Despite the murder that has just been committed and despite the carnage about to occur, we are less moved by the drama than we are struck by the power of the execution and seduced by the charm of the coloring. This supple white body, with golden halftones and gray-blue shadows, still throbs with life. It stands out with surprising relief and incomparable brilliance. The painting also caught the eye of
Thomas Hardy, who wrote: "At the Salon. Was arrested by the sensational picture called
The Death of Jezabel...a horrible tragedy, and justly so, telling its story in a flash." Hardy scholar Dennis Taylor, trying to track down the painting almost a century later, was informed by
René Le Bihan, curator of the
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest, "Alas, this painting disappeared amid the annihilation of our museum in 1941, and we have no trace of it, not a photograph or engraving or drawing." An image has since been located, in an issue of
Firmin Javel's ''L'Art français'' from 1888. Guay painted portraits from the beginning of his career, and after the
turn of the century the majority of paintings he exhibited at the Paris Salon were portraits. Of his portraits the only known surviving example is his painting of an old man in a garden, at the
Musée des beaux-arts de Morlaix (
Mon vieux voisin, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1890). ==Villages and farm houses==