Paysannes des Environs de Boulogne (Peasant women from near Boulogne)

Alphonse Legros (1837–1911) was an Anglo-French etcher, lithographer, painter and medallist. An accomplished creator of macabre allegories and realist scenes of the French countryside, he made a massive impact on the British Etching Revival.

Born in Dijon, a move to Paris by his family in 1851 saw the fourteen-year-old Legros working as a scene-painter of opera sets. During this time Legros also received further training at the École Impériale de Dessin, Paris, under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802–1897), whose method of teaching required students to copy Louvre works through mental recollection alone – emphasising the importance of a strong visual memory. Although Legros would spend much of his life living in Britain, his subject matter stayed distinctly French. His landscapes were enriched by memories of time spent during his childhood.

Legros moved to London in 1863, taught as Master of etching at the South Kensington School of Art in 1875 and was made Slade Professor at University College London in 1876. Upon his retirement in 1893, Legros appeared jaded about his time spent teaching, allegedly saying ‘vingt ans perdus’ – ‘twenty years lost’. Despite this disillusionment, during this time Legros shaped the future of the British Etching Revival through his notable students, such as William Strang and Charles Holroyd. Students and critics both noted his insistence on the quality of line which laid the foundation for the ‘Slade tradition’ of fine draughtsmanship.

Legros’ works exhibit less economy of line than the younger generation of etching revivalists; as a result, his scenes of allegory and peasant life in the French landscape are characterised by bold outlines and heavy crosshatching. He was a terrific technician, evident in his use of etching and drypoint alike.

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Paysannes des Environs de Boulogne (Peasant women from near Boulogne) is an 1873 etching that depicts three young peasant women seated together, their heads bowed and hands folded in contemplative prayer. At the feet of one of them is a small sack tied with string. The women sit in individual rustic chairs rather than pews, suggesting informal prayers in the home rather than contemplation as part of a congregation. Their local dress of distinctive bonnets and capes signals their position as rural peasant women at a remove from the industrial modernity of the urban centre. The use of light line conveys the simplicity of the setting and the piety of the women.

Despite living for decades in the metropolitan capitals of London and Paris, Legros had an affinity for rural people and their ways of life. He had been born in Dijon but had been raised alongside his cousins in the small village of Véronnes-les-Petites. His upbringing influenced him art well into his career and making an etching of distinctively French peasant women almost ten years into his residence in England demonstrates this point.

Legros had become well-known for his scenes of praying French peasants, as his first painting to receive critical praise L'angélus (1859) was followed by Ex-Voto (1860), both of which make a feature of that subject matter. He was apparently not a religious man but was considered by Maurice Dreyfous to be "the painter of a man or woman transformed by the emotion imparted by faith" (Dreyfous, quoted in Collet, p. 120). In using a simple line and delicate play of light in Paysannes des Environs de Boulogne (Peasant women from near Boulogne) Legros conveys the piety of women’s quiet contemplation and his obvious sympathy with them.

Te Papa has two impressions of this print. Both were presented to the National Art Gallery by the widow of London art dealer Harold Wright. See also Te Papa 1965-0012-190.

Sources:

Isabelle Collet, ‘Ex-Voto’, in Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Impressionists in London: French Artist in Exile 1870-1904 (Tate Publishing: London, 2017).

Maurice Harold Grant, ‘A Dictionary of British Etchers’, (London: Rockliff, 1953), pp. 127–128

Timothy Wilcox, ‘Legros, Alphonse (1837–1911)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004): https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/34480

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Legros

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art   July 2018