Description:
Clearly etched, very dark profile of bearded man.:Legros had a brief but notable young man's career in Paris. He shared in the rather somber realism that marked the late 1850s, when he numbered Courbet, Whistler, Fantin-Latour, and Manet among his acquaintances. His paintings, mostly of contemporary religious subjects, were praised by Champfleury and Baudelaire, and he was a founding member in 1862 of the Societe des aquafortistes. Lack of financial success, however, led him to England in 1863, and there he prospered, eventually becoming Slade Professor in London (although he refused to lecture in English). His prints and paintings include many portraits, religious themes, landscapes, and rural life. Except for portraits, the subjects of nearly all his work seem thoroughly French. It was prints which won him a French audience, although the print connoisseur Henri Beraldi said it was a small one because his etchings were "severe, austere, dismal, in execution simple and harsh to extremes: one even senses an affectation of archaism, and in modern subjects a kind of willful awkwardness." Beraldi, who preferred finish to "awkwardness," singled out for opprobrium the first two etchings below but praised as "capital pieces" a number of his later prints, including cats. 42 and 43. The secular and antisentimental twentieth century has limited the appreciation of Legros but he is widely regarded as one of the premier etchers of the years 1860 to 1895.:
Tags:
architecture; buildings; ancient; columns; ruins; temples; people; international Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1988.14.171 |
