Alphonse Legros

born Dijon, France, 1837; died Watford, England, 1911

BiographyAlphonse Legros was a painter, sculptor and printmaker who was noted for his religious subjects, grotesques, and landscapes. Apprenticed as a house decorator as a young man, he became a theatrical set painter on moving to Paris. He began attending drawing classes at the École des Beaux Arts and other schools while living in Paris starting in 1855 and submitting his work for entry into the annual Paris salons. It is during this period that Legros began etching, his preferred medium.

As a student in Paris, he met James McNeill Whistler who persuaded him to move to London in 1863, where he found many admirers and patrons and was ardently promoted by the brothers Dante Gabriele Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti.He began teaching etching at the South Kensington School of Art, and in 1876 became Slade Professor at University College, London. He became a naturalized English citizen in 1881 and resigned his professorship in 1892. He died in Watford, Hertfordshire, England.

He was a generous teacher and because he considered the traditional trip to Italy as key to artistic training, he devoted a portion of his salary to augment the costs for his students. Legros’ accomplished etchings demonstrate an economy of form, design and naturalistic handling of light that achieved widespread recognition and exerted a tremendous influence upon the direction of British printmaking. Today, Legros is considered the single most influential printmaker upon the development of England’s etching revival.

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