ALPHONSE LEGROS.
ANY generation since the brilliant times of Art—since the sixteenth
century in Italy, the seventeenth in Holland, the eighteenth in England
and in France—has had to deem itself fortunate if it has produced three
or four artists of individuality united with large attainment; and it is
much to be surmised that no generation will have greater cause than our
own to think it has done well if it has produced even as many.
Notorieties of the moment may always be counted by the score, but fame
remains so rarely for the most popular, that the serious student of the
work of a master in any art has no reason to question his own judgment
when it points him to admiration, merely because the object of his
admiration is not to be counted among the immediate successes of the
hour. Legros is not an immediate success. He has worked for
five-and-twenty years, and there are intelligent people who see little
in his pictures beyond their first ugliness. Each to his taste—we cannot
always blame them; and Legros has been ugly sometimes gratuitously,
sometimes with wantonness. But Legros is also a very grave and enduring
master, whose work is now full of mistake, and now of power, and now
again is certainly touched with that higher and keener faculty we call
inspiration.
The etchings of Legros range already, however, over a period of
seven-and-twenty years; and that he began so young, and at a time when
etching was not popular and the art had not become a trade, is a proof
at least of the spontaneity of his pursuit of it. By temperament and
instinct he was as much etcher as painter, perhaps even more. The
process of etching being—always in skilled hands, of course—perhaps the
readiest for the rendering of impressions and the expression of artistic
thought, it is natural that Legros, whose art, whatever it may lack in
immediate attractiveness, is one undoubtedly of impressions and of
thoughts, should have turned to this process. And so well, indeed, has
he increased his command of it—always with reference to his own
particular business, to the order of impressions it is his own task to
convey—that, though there are, indeed, several of his paintings which
have the qualities of a master’s work, we get the best of him in his
etchings. Great is the technical progress he has made in these since
some of the first plates catalogued so well by M. Poulet-Malassis and
Mr. Thibaudeau, but it is not to be imagined that the progress has been
uninterrupted. Incompleteness and uncertainty are still likely to be
visible. His execution, skilful at one time, and entirely responsive to
his desire, is at another time halting, wayward, insufficiently
controlled and directed. Therefore, though, as I say, the execution is
not seldom excellent—economical of means and yet rich in the possession
of various means—it would rarely be in itself the occasion of attracting
notice to his work. With Legros, it is the conception that dominates.
The conception is often such as recalls the highest achievements of Art.
[Illustration]
But the imagination of Legros, in virtue of which, quite as much as by
occasional mannerisms of handling, he recalls that older and more
pregnant Art which has well nigh passed from the very ken of the
producers of our own day’s trivial array, is not in any sense derived
from this or that past master; it is charged, on the contrary, in his
most considerable pieces with a serious and pathetic poetry quite his
own. Here and there, indeed, as in one early work—_Procession dans les
Caveaux de Saint-Médard_—it is not imagination at all, as that is
generally understood, but the keen observation of an artist content to
reproduce, that alone is remarkable; and here there is a certain amount
of audacity in the fidelity with which he has rendered the commonplace,
the mean, the narrow faces of a certain section of the Parisian lower
_bourgeoisie_ engaged in devotions which there is no beauty of form or
of thought to make interesting to the beholder. It is a piece of pure
realism—the hideous flounces and more hideous crinolines, the squat
figures, the slop-shop fashions, the common faces empty of records. And
in this pure and unrelieved realism there is a certain value, if there
is no charm. But the pieces to which Legros will owe such fame as the
better-judging connoisseurs and critics shall eventually accord him are
those in which the artistic instinct and desire of beauty, either of
form or of thought, has found some expression. It will be in part by
such masculine, yet refined and graceful, portraits as those of M. Dalou
and Mr. Poynter, such subtle ones as that of Cardinal Manning, such
pathetic ones as that of M. Rodin here, that Legros will stand high. It
will be in part by the etchings in which the pourtrayal of actual life
has been guided by the research for beauty, as, for instance, in the
_Chœur d’une Eglise Espagnole_, where not only is the head firm and
dignified and the lighting more intricate than is usual with this
master, but where the composition of bent figure and curved violoncello
is of great repose and refinement of beauty. A more various specimen of
the same type is to be found in a fine impression of _Les Chantres
Espagnols_. They are eight in the choir of a church—four sit in the
stalls, the others stand, of whom one turns the page of a missal placed
on a lectern. The scene is mostly dark—mostly even very dark—but the
light, by a very skilled treatment of it, falls here and there on
lectern, missal, and hand of the old man sitting in the choir. The
observation of reality in this plate has been at the same time keen and
poetical, for nothing can be truer and nothing more impressive than the
study of old faces out of which so much of the desire of life has gone,
and the study of gestures which are those of hand and will waxing
feeble. Two men, at least, are placed together in a pathetic harmony of
weakness: the drooping hand of one and his drooped head, as he sits in
his long-accustomed place; the open mouth of the other—his mouth opened
with the feebleness of a decayed intelligence, with the slow
understandings of a departing mind. Or, not to insist too much on a
picturesqueness in which pathos predominates, notice, when the occasion
presents itself, the first rendering of the subject known as the
_Lutrin_, with its acolyte of rare youthful dignity; or as an example of
work in which some little beauty of modelling has been sought to be
united even with every-day realism, see the design of the bare knee in
_L’Enfant Prodigue_.
But where Legros is most apart and alone is, after all, in the subjects
which owe most to the imagination, and of these the very finest are _La
Mort du Vagabond_, _La Mort et le Bûcheron_, and _Le Savant endormi_.
Something of the art that gives interest to these pieces is contained in
the careful persistence with which the etcher brings the realism of
physical ugliness into close contact and contrast with the spiritual and
supernatural. A comely and well-to-do youth slumbering in his chair at
the Marlborough could have no dreams an artist of Legros’s nature would
think worthy of recording, but the ugly votary of science and
intellectual speculation, who sleeps, from sheer weariness, in the
armchair before which are still the implements of his study and
research, has the dignity of strained endeavour; and M. Legros, in
pourtraying him and suggesting the subjects of his dream, has reached an
elevation which separates him from most of his contemporaries, by as
much as the _Melancholia_ of Dürer is separated from the _Melancholia_
of Beham. _La Mort du Vagabond_ is not a whit less suggestive in its
contrast between the feebleness of the worn-out beggar now stretched out
lonely on the pathside—his head raised, gasping, and his hat knocked
away—and the force and fury of the storm that beats over dead tree and
desolate common. The unity of tragic impression in homely life,
preserved in this plate, will give it a permanent value among the great
things of Art. _La Mort et le Bûcheron_ is more tender, not more nor
less poetical, but less weird; and nothing short of a high and vigorous
imagination could have saved from chance of ridicule, in days in which
the symbolical has long ceased to be an habitual channel of expression,
this etching of the veiled skeleton of Death appearing to the old man
still busy with his field-work, and beckoning him gently, while he, with
simple and ignorant yet not insensitive face, touched with awe and
surprise, looks up under a sudden spell it is vain to hope to cast off,
since for him, however unexpectedly, the hour has plainly come. Of this
very fascinating subject, there exist impressions from two different
plates: one of the plates, and in some respects the better and more
pathetic one—the one in which the figure of Death is gentler and more
persuasive, and in which the face of the woodman is the more mildly
expressive—having suffered an accident after only about a dozen
impressions had been taken from it. The second was then executed, with
something less at first than the success of the earlier one, so that the
almost unique and very rare impressions of the plate—whatever may chance
to be their money value—represent it to the least advantage. It was
retouched and retouched, and at length with more of reward for the
trouble than Legros has generally been able to meet with when
laboriously modifying his work in the attempt to realise his conception
more fully; until at last the enterprising management of _L’Art_ was
enabled to offer its readers for about three shillings a work of art not
rare, indeed, but of exquisite beauty. The success of the first plate,
which the acid had covered in a moment of neglect, had been almost
refound.
A final word about the landscapes. As a painter of landscape M. Legros
is little known, but there exist, I believe, in London one or two
considerable collections of water colours which exhibit almost
exclusively his art in landscape. As far as the etchings show it at all,
it is of the most account when it is called in for the accompaniment of
one of those impressive and doleful ditties I have just been speaking
of. Sometimes, however, it is good without this mission and
significance, as in the _Pécheur_, where a delicate effect of early
morning is given with exquisite refinement. But at other times, in which
the artist is dealing with landscape charged for him with no especial
meaning, his very observation of it seems to have been lacking in
interest and acuteness, as in the broad slope of grass by the
stream-side in his big print _Les Bûcherons_—a whole surface of ground
that is treated mechanically and without any worthy apprehension. And
yet this print, despite certain unpleasantness, contains in the heads of
the woodcutters some of his finest work. A much more sketchy subject,
_Paysage aux Meules_, has greater unity of impression. Like a good deal
of Legros’s landscape, it is distinctively French, this particular
glimpse of field and farm and rounded hill reminding one of the
wide-stretching uplands of the Haut Boulognais. Other landscapes are of
England. Others, again, are neither of England nor of France, nor of any
land which may be read of in the guide-book or visited by the
enterprising tourist, but of that land alone that rises in the
imagination of artistic men.
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INDEX.
BRACQUEMOND. His originality and limitation, p. iii.
CLAUDE. His _Bouvier_ and _Shepherd and Shepherdess conversing_, p. 4.
CROME. His etchings, p. 9.
EARLOM. His flower-pieces in mezzotint, p. 25.
GONSE. His catalogue of Jacquemart’s etchings, p. 18.
HADEN. His quality of vigour, p. 2;
his judgment of Méryon, p. 4;
his earliest etchings, p. 5;
_Mytton Hall_, p. 7;
_Egham_, p. 7;
_Water Meadow_, p. 7;
_Calais Pier_, p. 7;
_Penton Hook_, p. 8;
_Sunset on the Thames_, p. 9;
_Erith Marshes_, p. 9;
_Agamemnon_, p. 10;
_Sawley Abbey_, p. 10;
_Dusty Millers_, p. 10;
his Dorsetshire etchings, p. 11.
HAMERTON, p. iii. and p. 17.
JACQUEMART. His happy circumstances, p. 12;
he renders the soul of matter, p. 14;
his etchings of Oriental and _Sèvres_ porcelain, p. 15;
_Brocca Italienne_, p. 16;
_Vase de Vieux Vincennes_, p. 17;
_Miroir Français_, p. 20;
_Vénus Marine_, p. 21;
_Salière de Troyes_, p. 21;
his etchings after pictures, p. 23;
his flower-pieces, p. 25;
his work in water colour, p. 25;
his concern with Art, not nature, p. 27.
LEGROS. Essentially an etcher, p. 41;
his _Procession dans les Caveaux de Saint-Médard_, p. 42;
_Dalou_, p. 42;
_Poynter_, p. 42;
_Manning_, p. 42;
_Rodin_, p. 42;
_Les Chantres Espagnols_, p. 43;
_Le Lutrin_, p. 43;
_La Mort du Vagabond_, p. 44;
_La Mort et le Bûcheron_, p. 44;
his etched landscapes, p. 45.
MACBETH, p. iii.
MÉRYON. His method with architecture, p. 35.
REMBRANDT. His _Ephraim Bonus_ and _Clément de Jonghe_, p. 4;
his _Portrait of a woman lightly etched_, p. 15.
THIBAUDEAU. His catalogue of Legros’s etchings, p. 41.
TISSOT, p. iii.
VANDYKE. A decisive sketcher, p. 3.
WHISTLER. His quality of exquisiteness, p. 28;
his decorative arrangements, p. 29;
painted portraits, p. 30;
his etched portraits, p. 32;
_Fanny Leyland_, p. 33;
_The Kitchen_, p. 33;
_La Vieille aux Loques_, p. 34;
his _Venice_ series, p. 35;
_Free Trade Wharf_, p. 37;
_Billingsgate_, p. 37;
_Hungerford Bridge_, p. 38;
_Thames Police_, p. 38;
_Tyzack Whiteley_, p. 38;
_Black Lion Wharf_, p. 38.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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OTHER WORKS BY MR. WEDMORE.
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STUDIES IN ENGLISH ART.
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_ETCHINGS_
ON SALE BY THE FINE ART SOCIETY.
BY FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN.
£. s. d.
A By-road in Tipperary 6 6 0
A Water Meadow 4 4 0
Amalfi 1 11 6
Amstelodam 1 11 6
A Cottage Window 2 12 6
Battersea 4 4 0
Breaking up of the Agamemnon. First 5 5 0
State £7 7 0 Second State
Barque Refitting 1 1 0
Brentford Ferry 2 12 6
By Inveraron 3 3 0
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Cranbrook 3 3 0
Cardigan Bridge 2 12 6
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Dusty Millers 3 3 0
Evening 1 1 0
Early Morning—Richmond Park 2 12 6
Egham 2 2 0
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Fulham 2 12 6
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Puff Asleep —
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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_SIXTEEN THAMES ETCHINGS._
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BY SAMUEL PALMER.
_THE LONELY TOWER._ From “Il Penseroso.”
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_THE HERDSMAN’S COTTAGE_ (1850). Plate destroyed.
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_THE BELLMAN._ From “Il Penseroso” (1879). Sixty Remarque Proofs (of
which few remain unsold) £4 4 0
Plain Impressions 2 2 0
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_THE SKYLARK_ (1850). Plate destroyed £4 4 0
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_CHRISTMAS; or, Folding the Last Sheep._ From Bampfylde’s “Sonnet”
(1850). A few Fine Proofs £3 3 0
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_THE WILLOW_ (1850). Mr. Palmer’s First Etching £0 10 6
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_THE SLEEPING SHEPHERD._ Plate destroyed £4 4 0
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_EARLY MORNING—Opening the Fold._ Remarque Proofs all sold. Artist’s
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_THE VINE._ Two Subjects on one Plate. Plate destroyed £5 5 0
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_THE EARLY PLOUGHMAN_ £2 2 0
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_THE HERDSMAN._ Plate destroyed £6 6 0
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_THE MORNING OF LIFE._ Plate destroyed £5 5 0
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_THE RISING MOON._ Plate destroyed £5 5 0
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_In addition to these, a large number of examples of Etchings by J.
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_Mr. Ruskin’s Notes on his Turner Drawings._ Exhibited at The Fine Art
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).