Alphonse Legros (France 1837 - UK 1911)
Their First Sight of Death, circa 1887-1890
Alphonse Legros (French, 1837-1911)
Pencil and ink wash on paper laid on board
7 x 10-1/8 inches (17.8 x 25.7 cm) (sheet)
Signed lower left: A. Legros
PROVENANCE:
Rex Evans Gallery, Los Angeles, California;
Collection of Barbara Poe Levee, Los Angeles, California, by descent;
Private collection, Denver, Colorado, by descent.
Condition report
The work remains in very good condition, aside from very minor foxing; matted and framed under glass.
Framed Dimensions 16.75 X 19.5 Inches
about the artist
French mid 19 Century Modern Realist Alphonse Legros was along with Courbet, Manet, Fantin Latour, Degas, Whistler, Baudelaire to name a few one of the artists ahead of his time at the forefront of the French Realist movement . When Modern Realism began its metamorphosis into Impressionism with colors and shape taking priority to line and form, Legros did not follow. Instead he formed with Whistler and Fantin Latour the Association des Trois and moved to London where he lived from 1863 until his death in 1911. He would continue in the direction of modern realism giving it a solid ground of NeoClassism respecting the teaching of the great masters of the Renaissance such as Holbein, Brueghel as well as his early contemporaries such as Ingres and Manet. His aesthetic, intellectual and moral integrity left him unjustly forgotten by the larger art world.
Today, Legros’s paintings and etchings can be found in major museums throughout Europe, Britain, and America, and his contributions to the mid-nineteenth-century art world are, in the spirit of Champfleury and Baudelaire, again being recognized.
For more information on his biography by Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D.
www.gallery19c.com/artists/48-alphonse-legros/overview/
The Triumph of Death