Alphonse Legros

1837 – 1911

French (British) etcher, painter, sculptor and teacher. He is said to have been apprenticed at the age of 11 to a sign-painter, at which time he may also have attended classes at the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. He was employed as assistant on a decorative scheme in Lyon Cathedral before moving in 1851 to Paris, where he worked initially for the theatre decorator Charles-Antoine Cambon (1802-1875). He soon became a pupil of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897), whose methodical instruction and liberality in fostering individual talent proved of lasting benefit to Legros. In 1855 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, attending irregularly until 1857. During this period Legros had a taste for early Netherlandish art and for French Romanticism, which was later superseded by his admiration for Claude, Poussin and Michelangelo. However, his devotion to Holbein proved constant and was apparent as early as his first Salon painting, Portrait of the Artist's Father (1857; Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Legros's draftsmanship was similar to that of Ingres, but his approach was sentimental. He moved to England in 1863 and became a professor of fine arts at the Slade School of Art, London. Best known as a graphic artist, he depicted religious subjects, peasant scenes, and landscapes, which sometimes display a taste for the grotesque. His Angelus (1859) is in the Louvre.

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