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Alphonse Legros
Self Portrait
ca. 1870
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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Alphonse Legros
Head of a Man facing left
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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Alphonse Legros
Head of a Man looking up
ca. 1890
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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Alphonse Legros
Half Length Study of a Model
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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Alphonse Legros
Seated Model
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
"His arrival [that of Alphonse Legros]
at the Slade [School of Art in London]
was stage-managed by [Prof. E.J.]
Poynter, a friend since their student days in Paris, who had in 1875 secured for him an etching class at the National Art-Training Schools in South Kensington. The following year he persuaded the Slade Committee to permit Legros to take over temporarily some of his duties as Slade Professor, and when he resigned his position later that year Legros was allowed to succeed him, despite opposition from some quarters on the grounds that he was a foreigner and that his command of English was far from good. He was to become a British citizen in 1881, but his English did not improve, and most of his teaching was of necessity in the form of demonstration rather than verbal instruction. His skilful painting of a head once a term before the entire school became 'a momentous event' in the curriculum. This method of instruction did not suit all students, and his shrewd estimate of his pupils' abilities combined with his unwillingness to 'compromise with the singleness of purpose that should guide an artist in his career' led him to neglect his less gifted or committed students. One of these wrote ruefully, 'Legros was not a stimulating teacher for the ordinary, undistinguished student.' His exacting standards, his blunt manner and his habit of seizing his chalk and drawing his corrections all over the students' carefully prepared work was guaranteed to offend many susceptibilities. But others, such as Charles Holroyd and William Strang, who both became his assistants for a time, responded well to his tuition, and with many his personality commanded great respect, as did his ability to stimulate their artistic appreciation and to impress on them the seriousness of their calling."
"In 1892 Legros resigned from the Slade . . . his last years at the School were marked by an increasing disillusionment with teaching in general. His visits to his students became less frequent. Archibald Hatrick, who arrived at the School in 1888, recalled 'his somewhat rare rounds of the classes,' and Alfred Thornton, also at the School towards the end of the decade, remembered that Legros was by now 'a little weary of teaching.' His eventual departure was precipitated by a number of complaints, including that of an angry father who claimed that his daughter 'appears to me to get hardly any teaching at all.'"
– from an article by Philip Atwood in the
British Numismatics Journal (1986)
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Alphonse Legros
Study of the Belvedere Torso
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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Alphonse Legros
Study of the Belvedere Torso
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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Alphonse Legros
Study from the Antique
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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Alphonse Legros
Study of the Head of a Horse from the Parthenon
(Elgin Marbles, British Museum)
1898
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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Alphonse Legros
Head of a Man
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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Alphonse Legros
Study of a Model
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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Alphonse Legros
Study of a Model
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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Alphonse Legros
Study of a Model
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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David Wilkie Wynfield
Portrait of Alphonse Legros
ca. 1865-70
albumen print
Royal Academy of Arts, London |
