ennobled into something actually heroic, could only have been done by an artist who had struggled with the cares and felt the anxieties of the processionists; such typification of poverty as is to be found in the "Chaudronnier" and the " Vagabond," could only have come from a maker who has fought in the ranks and known the linesmen in life's battle for his comrades and his equals. It is not for nothing that M. Legros is, so to speak, the Holbein of the poor. He is a self-made man, and if he ever thought of denying that he is so, nine-tenths of his works would rise up and give him the lie. The artist started in life at eleven years old, as 'prentice to a housepainter named Nicolardo. The master was a not unamiable drunkard; and the pupil, who seems to have known both cold and hunger in his service, had really a principal share in the conduct of the business. He was rewarded by being sent for a few months to the art school at Dijon. Presently the Legros family went south, and settled at Lyons, and there, in a decorator's workshop, the ex-'prentice found his first opportunity, and got employed in adorning Cardinal de Benald's chapel with arabesques and ornaments in fresco. In '51 he came to Paris and entered the studio of Cambon, the scene painter; but here he made no friends, and was glad when he could get away from scenepainting and scene painters both. A pupil in Belloe's art school, in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medicine, he attracted the notice of Lecoq de Boisbaudran, a drawing-master of repute, under whom he worked for some time. His advance in art could hardly have been other than astonishing. According to Burty, the drawings he made under Lecoq and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which he attended in a vague and desultory way, have in them much of the vigour and correctness, the ease and the distinction, that are notable in those he has of late produced; while, in '57, his twentieth year, he not only exhibited for the first time, but, in a portrait of his father, exhibited a picture that was greeted as a masterpiece by men like Champfleury and Baudelaire. Champfleury, the novelist and archæologist, a man of singular intellectual independence and unusual keenness of perception, always on the look-out for power and sincerity in art, and always armed against the intrusion of what is false and what is feeble, had already recognised and saluted the talent of Courbet. He did the same for Legros. The portrait had evidently been painted under the influence of Hans Holbein, the great and original master to whom, after nature and himself, Legros is most largely indebted. None the less, it seemed to the novelist one of the first works that announce the advent and production of a rare artistic personality, and this, as we know, it actually proved to be. It is not strange that Champfleury's visit to the young painter-already confident of his powers and eager for work and notoriety-should have marked an epoch in the latter's life, and yet remain one of his best and highest memories. The immediate effects of Champfleury's notice and approbation were but small. Legros had been discovered, but only, as it appeared, for Champfleury and Champfleury's friends. Buyers were few, and life not easily lived. Bohemia is, in some ways, a pleasant land enough. As you read of it in the pretty conventional idylls of Mürger, you do not wonder that there should be men and women found ready and willing to risk its hazards and attempt its adventures. But Mürger is no more true to life and reality than the Lancret or the Fragonard, from whom he derives. It is a fine thing to listen to Mimi and Rodolphe as they carol that joyous round of theirs— Cuirassés de patience Contre la mauvais destin, Au fanfare de nos chants La jeunesse n'a qu'un temps and in their way those first four verses are more significant than most of their author's work. But there is another aspect to things Bohemian than that which Mürger elected to show his readers; and this aspect, which is more often the true one, is not only not attractive, but bitterly and miserably repellant. It was under this aspect-caught and rendered by Champfleury in the "Chien-Caillou" of his first volume, and in certain pages of the "Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse "—that Bohemia was seen by Legros. He lived as he could-by giving lessons, designing frontispieces, lithographs, an occasional poster; and his existence was not a happy one. Still, the old time had its compensations as well as its trials. He learned to etch, and if his etchings were usually laughed at, they found admirers in such men as the late PouletMalassis, who collected them from the first, and in the lamented Guillaume Regamey, one of the soundest painters of his epoch. Champfleury and Baudelaire were among the young man's intimates and admirers. So, too, was Léon Gambetta, then a briefless advocate, haunting the Café Procope, where, to his future portraitist, he read one evening, in that fresh and magnificent voice of his, the "Châtiments" of Victor Hugo, with an eye on the door for fear of spies, and slipping the volume underneath the table with every new arrival, lest they might hear who should not. With youth and hope, and acquaintances of this sort, and the consciousness of his own talent, Legros, like one of Balzac's heroes, contrived to exist and to push forward on his way. The end was far, and the road was rough; but with patience and courage much is accomplished, and in times of battle and endeavour, while many perish, it is but few who despair. Legros, then, went on working at his craft, and produced what pictures he could. For the moment the cast of his inspiration was, to a certain extent, religious. He painted the populace, as always; but he painted the populace as it appears in the act of worship. He seems to have discerned the fact that at prayer and praise the people looked its noblest and its most pathetic. In the treatment of this class of subject the "deep, imaginative melancholy," which is rightly described by Professor Colvin as a prime characteristic of his art, found ample scope; it accorded well with the solemn richness of his scheme of colour, and the uncompromising directness and severity of his design. A little picture, called the "Angélus," was exhibited by him in '59; it was warmly praised by Charles Baudelaire, who recognised its author for a true religious painter. In '61 the "Ex-Voto" was accepted for the Salon, and badly hung there. Flandrin at once demanded a medal for it, but only an honourable mention was accorded, and it was returned unsold. The "Ex-Voto," it may be added, was afterwards exhibited in England, where it was warmly admired, and finally passed into the museum at Dijon, a gift from the artist to his native city. Two years after the "Ex-Voto" Legros sent in "Le Lutrin," or 'La Messe des Morts," a picture painted under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty, and, with all its great and striking merits, unlucky from first to last. It was received, but it was badly hung, and, like the "Ex-Voto," it came back to the studio. Long afterwards Legros cut it to pieces, and with a fragment of it, and another picture, "L'Amende Honorable," won the gold medal of the year. Meanwhile, however, his career as a French painter, and the rival of French painters, may be said to have come to an end with the check received over the "Messe des Morts." He quitted France for England, where he has since remained, and where he has won the better part of his success and acquired-the most of his fame. The kindness and consideration with which the young painter was received in London did much to console him in his exile. Among his warmest friends were the brothers Rossetti, and the distinguished artist who is now President of the Royal Academy; while from Mr. Watts he had such proofs of goodwill and esteem as must have been wonderfully grateful to him, being good to think of and remember even yet. In '64 he exhibited the "Ex-Voto," and, although the picture was hung so high as to be only visible through an opera-glass, it attracted great attention, and created no small stir among painters and critics both. The exhibition picture of '65 (it was not a particularly good one) was a life-size" Return of the Prodigal;" that of '66 was a "Martyrdom of Stephen," which was hung high over a doorway in the Academy, and which, passing over to France, won the gold medal of the Beaux-Arts, was bought by the Government, and, after a year in the Luxembourg, went into the museum at Avranches, where, a noble commentary on the æsthetic principles of the Hanging Committee, it yet remains. In the same year Legros exhibited a couple of unimportant canvasses at the French Gallery in Pall Mall; one the "Interior of a Spanish Church," the other a first draught of "L'Amende Honorable.” One of the most successful and powerful of the painter's works, which was medalled by the Salon of '68, was bought by the Government, and is now hanging in excellent company in the Luxembourg. Meanwhile, '67 saw the exhibition of the " Cupid and Psyche," a work of no great merit; of the "Communion," a picture painted under the influence of the early Florentines; and of the "Study of a Head," the first of these vigorous transcripts from the life, these rapid and masterful pochades, in which the artist is unrivalled and with which he has made himself a place apart among his contemporaries. Next year in Paris, the year of the "Amende "-was in London the year of the "Demoiselles du Mois de Marie," one of the painter's luckiest efforts, and of the "Réceftoire." Of the second of these works, it was remarked by a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, whose hand is easily recognisable and whose authority is not to be gainsaid, that "most painters, whatever their line of work may be, would feel that it would be a higher gratification to their purely artistic ambition to have produced this picture than to have painted any other in the Exhibition, not because it is the most perfect or the most beautiful, but because it shows an unhesitating command of all the resources peculiar to their art ;" and, as the artist himself is understood to be still well pleased with the "Réceftoire," it may be assumed, without much difficulty, that the critic has not overstated its merits. Thereafter M. Legros produced some of his most notable pictures :-"Le Pélerinage," presented by Mr. Philip Rathbone to the city of Liverpool; the "Bénédiction de la Mer;" the "Femmes de Boulogne;" the admirable "Chaudronnier;" the "Marchand de Poissons ;" and so on. Such of them as were exhibited at the Academy were treated badly enough to excite attention and remark. Certain critics of the epoch were loud in their complaints of the way in which Legros was always placed, and of the difficulties put in the way of his recognition. It is, therefore, by no means wonderful that, when Sir Coutts Lindsay established the Grosvenor Gallery, and thus conferred a great and lasting service on the arts, Legros should have broken for the moment with the authorities at Burlington House, and set his face towards the new and golden opportunity that was offered him elsewhere. In the new rooms in Bond-street he found for the first time a fitting place for his pictures. Till then the public had had perforce to take a great deal of his merit and accomplishment on trust. What he had exhibited elsewhere had seldom been so hung as to be approachable. It was otherwise in Sir Coutts Lindsay's new foundation, and Legros, grateful for his treatment and satisfied with his surroundings, has from the first exhibited largely there, and exhibited well. To the first gathering he contributed the four "Studies," now hung at South Kensington; they had been painted before his pupils at the Slade School, and were to be reckoned for not a little in the brilliant success of Sir Coutts' venture. In '75 he painted, for Sir Charles Dilke, his admirable portrait of the great Frenchman he had known au temps jadis at the Café Procope; and '76 he exhibited a fine portrait of Lord Emley, and published the "Mort du Vagabond"-one of the most famous and impressive of his etchings-and the portrait of Cardinal Manning. In '78 his exhibition pictures were "Le Répas des Pauvres," a second "Angélus," and the excellent composition, "La Fin du Jour." In '79, with several studies, he sent in his "Jacob's Dream." In the collection now on view at the Grosvenor Gallery, he is represented by upwards of seventeen studies, all of them remarkable; one, a drawing from the antique (No. 304 in the catalogue), is probably the finest academical drawing made since Ingres. It is an open secret that the picture he is at work on for the forthcoming exhibition is the largest he has attempted. It is to be called " L'Incendie," and seems to have been developed from a composition in the possession of M. Gambetta, representing a fire by night, and the destruction of a peasant's cottage. As it stands, it is not yet sufficiently advanced to enable one to speak with anything like certainty of its chances of success. Thus much, however, may be hazarded concerning it; that it is a picture full of energy and dignity, and grandiose alike in sentiment and in design. It has as yet been question of the painter only; the time has come for a few words as to the teacher. Fortune, as has been seen, was for a good while hostile to Legros. Of late she has shown herself far less coy and far more discriminating; a great change has been wrought in the artist's life and function; at this moment his work is regarded by many as second in importance and interest to that of no living painter. Dating from '76, his appointment to the Slade Professorship of Fine Arts at University College-a distinction he shares with Mr. Sidney Colvin at Cambridge, and, since Ruskin's retirement, with Mr. W. B. Richmond at Oxford-has been a good thing for him, and a thing no whit less good for the cause of art. The appointment is owing in great measure to the generosity and intelligence of Professor Poynter. Himself an admirable draughtsman, and an able and enlightened teacher, Professor Poynter was quick to recognise the mastery of line and form, the vigorous and imaginative correctness, the intellectual passion, that are the distinguishing characteristics of the draughtsmanship of Legros; and on his transfer |