Femmes en Prière, 1888. Oil on canvas, 521/2 x 695/8 inches (133.5 x 177 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. NO1501.
This work was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1888. It portrays a group of mainly young women, seated or kneeling to pray, in a dimly lit austere French church. The women are all dressed in black with primarily white caps. Bénédite considered it one of Legros’s masterpieces: “The austere and pathetic The Dead Christ (1888), which was exhibited at the New Gallery at the same time as that masterpiece, the Femmes en prière, belonging to the Tate Gallery. With English readers I have no need to insist with regard to this painting, which is already classic. One cannot conceive anything more gently touching than this grand and pensive scheme, where all is on the same lofty level – sentiment, form and execution. It is one of the most important productions of modern art” (19-20).
F. G. Stephens writing in The Athenaeum considered this work one of the finest in the exhibition:
Opposite Mr. Burne-Jones‘s contributions hangs a very different work by M. Legros; yet some minds will prefer to dwell on its grave sentiment – mournful that cannot be said to be. The Femmes en Prière (8) of the French artist consists of two rows of Burgundian peasant women, nearly life-size figures, seated or kneeling before a shrine. Their devout looks show the profound absorption of their minds and hearts. The sympathy of the painter has inspired these faces, and he has so designed his work that every element – for instance, it’s soft pale rosy and clear illumination, the dark grey and black cloaks of the women, and the chiaroscuro in which the light and shade, tones and colours combine - is thoroughly, we might say touchingly, in keeping with the subject. ‘Femmes en Prière’ is the most thoroughly spontaneous and sincere work we have seen for a long time. The artist’s feeling for colour is as manifest in this comparatively low-toned picture as if it had glowed with hues like those of Danae‘s robe and Perseus’s armour. The finest part of the design is the face of the young woman kneeling nearest to the spectator; next in value is that of her neighbour just behind, in the act of making an offering… But we are inclined to think his ‘Femmes en Prière’ is the finest picture in the gallery. [(]636]
The critic of The Art Journal described this work as: “austere and sober… The purity and suave evenness of the flesh tints in ‘Femmes en prière’ do not prevent the heads from showing their progressive envelopment in the dim atmosphere of the old church” (221). The reviewer for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine found this work both interesting and powerful: “The same artist has a powerful picture called ‘Femmes en Prière,’ a company of women before an altar - the foremost figures kneeling, and all with an air of devotion expressed in different characteristics, but all natural, none irreverent. The colour is very low, the women wrapped in black cloaks, all but the foremost, who carries a candle in her hand; but notwithstanding this sobriety of tint, the picture is exceedingly interesting” (825).
M. H. Spielmann in The Magazine of Art found the rather monochromatic palette of this painting depressing: “A total contrast to the last-mentioned works are Mr. Legros’s ‘Femmes en Prière,’ and ‘Dead Christ.’ The figures in both these pictures are finely modelled, but they display a lack of colour which is somewhat depressing” (300). The Illustrated London News did not find the colouring nor the expressions of the women’s faces particularly pictorial: “Mr. Legros occupies even more space on the wall than Mr. Hallé with his two dark-toned religious pictures, ‘Femmes en Prière’ (8), two rows of Breton women in a bare church; and a ‘Dead Christ’ (64) lying on a rock in front of the sepulchre. In neither picture do we see any of that plasticity of which Mr. Legros once gave evidence; and in the group of women in their black cloaks and white head-dress there is a monotony of expression as well as of colour which may be truthful but is scarcely pictorial” (573).
Bibliography
“Exhibitions.” The Art Journal New Series XXVII (1888): 221-22.
Bénédite, Léonce. “Alphonse Legros, Painter and Sculptor.” The Studio XXIX (June 1903), 3-22.
“The Pictures of the Year.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine CXLIII (1888) 813-26.
“The New Gallery.” The Illustrated London News XCII (May 26, 1888): 573.
Spielmann, Marian H. “The New Gallery.” The Magazine of Art XI (1888): 299-301.
Stephens, Frederic George. “Fine Arts. The New Gallery.” The Athenaeum No. 3160 (May 19, 1888): 635-36.
Last modified 11 November 2022