Prêtre au Lutrin, 1870. Oil on canvas, 36 x 46 inches (91.4 x 116.8 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. NO3135.
This painting, also known as Rehearsing the Service, was shown at the Royal Academy in 1870. It shows two priests, an elderly one seated and preparing to play on an organ, and a younger one standing behind him holding a Bible or hymn book in his hands. The model for the younger priest on the right is the well-known Italian model Alessandro di Marco.
When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy the critic of The Art Journal compared this work to those by seventeenth--Century Spanish religious painters: “’Prêtre au Lutrin’ (139). M. Legros is strong in individualism, he reaches near the force of Zurbarán and Ribera, and again in ‘Un Vieillard en Prière’ (228) he is not far from Van Eyck. It is interesting thus to trace the influence of the old masters upon our modern men” (166). Later The Art Journal, when commenting on Legros’s submission to the Dudley Gallery of the same year 1870, makes these telling comments about the painter and his art: “Alphonse Legros is a mediaevalist, though of the strong naturalistic type...Legros is the most uncompromising of painters: others may be courtiers, sycophants, parasites; but he dares to tell the unflattering truth. Thus, while applauded by critics, he is coldly received by the public” (372).
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum also discussed this work among Legros’s other submissions to the Royal Academy:
Mr. Legros is in every sense an artist, except that, especially at first sight, his pictures appear unreasonably hard and deficient in half-tones and tints; this is the more to be regretted as these works are really less hard than they seem; it is the more remarkable because Mr. Legros’s strength lies in chiaroscuro and color. Apart from the latter two elements of painting, he has a very uncommon power in expression, particularly of the sober and sadly pathetic sorts… Mr. Legros’s other pictures here are less obnoxious than the above [Une Scène de Barricade] to the charge of needless hardness. ’Prêtre au Lutrin’ (139) shows two priests vested according to their dignities, one standing before and playing upon an organ, his hands hovering over the keys; his face deliberating, so to say, on the grand sounds he evokes: the other priest holds a book; his expression perfectly suggests the act of listening with gravity. This work is, to our luxurious tastes, a little dry in painting, but withal very grave and solemn, having beautiful points of colour in a masculine order. [648]
Liz Prettejohn has pointed out the indebtedness of this work to Venetian Renaissance painting, a not uncommon feature of his work at this time as it was for many English artists in the Pre-Raphaelite circle.
Bibliography
“The Royal Academy.” The Art Journal New Series IX (June 1, 1870): 161-72.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth. “The Scandal of M. Alphonse Legros.” Art History XLIV (January 16, 2021): 78-107.
Stephens, Frederic George. “Fine Arts. The Royal Academy.” The Athenaeum No. 2220 (May 14, 1870): 647-49.
Last modified 11 November 2022