A Baptism, 1877. Hand coloured wood engraving after the painting. The wood engraving was published in The Magazine of Art, 1884, page 88.
This is a handcoloured woodcut reproduction of one of nine works that Legros exhibited at the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition held in 1877 whose dimensions and current whereabouts are unknown. Legros included four of his works entitled “Study of a Head’. Each of these portrait sketches was executed in under two hours and used by Legros as teaching by example exercises for his students at the Slade School. These sketches greatly impressed the critic of The Builder, but he was less enthusiastic about the more finished works:
Of Mister Legros’s finished works the best are, perhaps, the picture of the itinerant tinker (‘Le Chaudronnier’) at work at the roadside; but all the works shown deserve examination. That in his more finished works the artist’s power is not so unquestionable or so complete as in his sketches and etchings, may be admitted: not that there is any careless work, but there is a certain lack of force and brilliancy, too great monotony of color, which tells more or less against effect of larger paintings. It is sufficiently absurd, however, to reflect that the author of them had to withdraw his pictures from the Academy for want of finding a respectable position there, when we consider what is annually found ‘on the line’ there. [440]
The critic for The Spectator when discussing Legros contributions to the exhibition focused his attentions on Le Chaudronnier but also commented: “No. 79 and 80, ‘Le Cloitre Espanol’ and ‘A Baptism,’ respectively, are in the sterner and more classical manner of this artist, but they are each worthy of attention in their way” (664). The Magazine of Art in 1882 commented: Mr. George Howard’s ‘Baptism’ is another picture in which Legros appears not only skilful but Inventive as a colourist” (330).
Sidney Colvin, when discussing Pictures at Palace Green in George Howard’s collection in The Magazine of Art in 1884, pointed out that Legros’s art and this particular painting emphasize lower-class labor:
In common with some other of the strongest artists of modern France, Mr. Legros has a deep and vital sympathy with the lives of labourers on field or shore, and a keen artistic sense of the various characters, whether of patient dignity and endurance, or only of toil-worn submission and depression, which their occupations imprint upon their frames and countenances. At the same time he has also a high and classical instinct of style. His work is devoid of everything that startles or allures, but full on the other hand of a peculiar, highly-disciplined, quietly ascetic and impressive power and dignity. One of the most precise and severe of living draughtsmen, his studies in black-and-white from the life or from the antique approach in purity and severity of feeling, and in certainly and conciseness of workmanship, perhaps nearer than any done in our days to the excellences of the great Italian masters. [86]
Colvin also points out that “it is this firm and severe standard of draftsmanship and of style which makes him so excellent a teacher. It is this also which prevents his representations of toiling or dull types and characters from ever degenerating into commonness or offence. A certain austere and depressed dignity never deserts them.
Whereas many critics point to the often-undefined Old Masters as the major influence upon Legros, Colvin claims that,
As a painter, Mr. Legros technically most resembles the Spanish masters, such as Ribera, for his sober choice and his broad handling of colours, and for his resolute and unwavering directness of method. Devoid as they are of popular charm, his works have qualities very much more valuable. In the christening scene [A Baptism] reproduced in our one concluding woodcut, we have a typical scene of French peasant life and character, interpreted with quite masterly power and feeling. From the whole quiet scene and simply ordered solemnity what a spirit is breathed of time-honoured habitude and hereditary seriousness and devoutness. This is, as it were, the imaginative atmosphere of the picture: and if we come to details, what truth, and at the same time what strength, in these types of priest and peasant: what an unforced air in the several personages of duty, patience, and composure: with an absence of all artificial or deliberate prettiness, what spontaneous dignity of gesture – even what grave beauty of type and character, in the elder girl who kneels in front and turns her face to the younger one beside her. These plain white coifs and black cloaks, moreover, with what admirable art and understanding are they turned to account, both for design of drapery and for harmony and opposition of color. [86-88]
Bibliography
“The Grosvenor Gallery.” The Builder XXXV (May 5, 1877): 439-440.
Colvin, Sydney. “Pictures at Place Green.” The Magazine of Art VII (1884): 83-88.
“Professor Legros.” The Magazine of Art V (1882): 327-34.
“The Grosvenor Gallery.” The Spectator L (May 26, 1877): 664-65.
Last modified 15 November 2022