Legros and the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Circle
Legros's relationships with James McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his brother William are best described as friendships that greatly aided him economically rather than affected him artistically. Rossetti in particular unselfishly helped Legros sell his works to his own patrons, but he, other Pre-Raphaelites, and painters of the aesthetic school had little, if any, influence upon Legros’s painting, which remained influenced chiefly by his French training and devotion to the Old Masters. His sculpture, work with medals, and etchings proved far more influential than his painting,
The Friendship and Falling Out with Whistler
Despite their later differences there is no doubt that Whistler’s friendship was instrumental to Legros’s initial success in England. Legros received a few commissions for paintings after his move to London, particularly from the Greek community, but initially he supported himself primarily by his etching and teaching. In the summer of 1863 Thomas Armstrong recalled an excursion he and a group of young artists, including Whistler, Rossetti, Legros, du Maurier, and Poynter made to Tulse Hill, the home of the Ionides family, one of the most prominent members of the Greek community in London (Lamont 195). The Ionides not only became patrons to Legros but eventually relied on him as an art advisor to Constantine Ionides in his collecting activities. Maria Zambaco’s mother, Euphrosyne Cassavetti, was another important early patron of Legros.
In 1863 Whistler noted that Legros was “at one moment in so deplorable a condition that it needed God or a lesser person to pull him out of it. And so I brought him over to London, and for a while he worked in my studio” (Pennell 77). Despite their initial closeness to each other, as early as 1863 their friendship had already started to disintegrate. Legros was then living with Whistler and his mistress Joanna Hiffernan at their house at 7 Lindsay Row. Jo did not care for Legros who had apparently outstayed his welcome. In a letter of November 1863 to Thomas Armstrong from George Du Maurier he writes, “Jimmy & Legros are going to part company, on account (I believe) of the exceeding hatred with which the latter has managed to inspire the fiery Joe [sic]” (Du Maurier, Letters, 218-19). In a later letter to Armstrong of December 25, 1864 Du Maurier writes: “He [Legros] called here the other day, and talked very bitterly of Jimmy, whom he says he can never see again” (248-49).
In the early summer of 1867 an incident occurred which made the break in their friendship irrevocable. The Pennells in their The Life of James McNeill Whistler recount that Whistler and Legros had met by chance at the office of their mutual friend Luke Ionides. They got into an argument resulting in a fight where Whistler struck Legros and knocked him down (83). William Michael Rossetti had told the Pennells that the cause of the quarrel was over women, but other authors have suggested that the cause of their quarrel was about Legros owing Whistler money (Fredeman, letter 67.52&n.1, 524). William Michael Rossetti remarked on his brother’s reaction to the quarrel that “Gabriel at the time spoke of it to me with great concern, and said: ‘I could imagine myself in a moment of exasperation, committing such an assault upon a friend; but if so I should the next moment kneel down with shame and compunction and implore his pardon’” (Angeli 127). William Michael Rossetti, in his diary for April 16, 1867, wrote that he and Gabriel “sympathize entirely with L[egros] in this particular affair – without affecting to determine the strict rights & wrongs of the original dispute” (Fredeman letter 67.52&n.1, 524). Despite attempts by D. G. Rossetti to be a mediator in the dispute in an attempt to get the two former friends to make up, this never happened and they never spoke to each other again.
Legros and the Rossetti brothers
It was the Rossetti brothers, however, who were responsible for his long-term success in England, both as an artist and educator. The Rossetti brothers were amongst the first people Whistler introduced Legros to in London and they quickly became his friends and actively promoted his work. Du Maurier wrote in a letter to Thomas Armstrong of December 25, 1864: “He [Legros] spoke of Rossetti as his best & most useful friend” (248-49). D. G. Rossetti hung works by Legros in his studio and sold them to his own patrons, including the Norwich textile manufacturer William Houghton Clabburn. Rossetti arranged for Legros to copy works by the Old Masters for Lady Ashburton (Fredeman letter 64.126.1, 9). James Leathart bought Legros’s Hamlet on Rossetti’s recommendation. Additional letters show that Rossetti attempted to interest Leathart in additional works by Legros. Leathart became dissatisfied with the Hamlet he initially bought, however, and arranged to exchange it for another work. He eventually owned a Legros oil painting entitled The Woodcutter and a watercolour Near Amiens.
In addition to helping find purchasers for Legros’s work, the Rossetti brothers were helpful in other ways. In a letter of December 7, 1866 to Frederic George Stephens, the art critic of The Athenaeum, William Michael Rossetti asked him to go to Legros’s home to look at works in the studio. He requested Stephens mention Legros’s work in his Fine Art Gossip column. Rossetti wrote: “any little service in this sort of way might be a real help to him, and he happens to need such as times go” (Peattie letter 115, 165). Stephens obliged his old friend by writing of Legros’s work in The Athenaeum on December 29, 1866. William Michael Rossetti, in turn, praised Legros’s paintings shown at contemporary exhibitions. For instance, in a review from 1864, he stated: “M. Legros’s ‘Ex Voto’ is one of the largest pictures in the gallery, and, to our thinking, incontestably the greatest” (Rossetti, 1867, 31). He subsequently praised Legros’s painting The Refectory in his Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868. In his review Rossetti said of Legros: “The painter, a man now of reputation equally confirmed and well deserved both in his own country and in ours, knows perfectly well what he is about”(9-10). In 1871 Legros was appointed the teacher of etching at the National Art Training School at South Kensington on the recommendations of D. G. Rossetti, G. F. Watts, and Edward Poynter. Legros definitely benefitted from his friendship with members of the avant garde in London such as Rossetti, Watts, Leighton, and Burne-Jones who introduced him to progressive collectors in London such as Frederick Leyland, Eustache Smith and his wife Eustacia, George and Rosalind Howard, and Constantine Ionides who bought his works from the 1860s onwards.
Legros became both a frequent visitor and a dinner guest at D. G. Rossetti’s home, Tudor House, at 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. By October 6, 1863 Legros’s friendship with Rossetti had obviously grown to the extent that Legros was one of the friends that had his photographic portrait taken by Lewis Carroll [Charles Ludwidge Dodgson] in the garden of Rossetti’s house. The Rossettis also introduced Legros to other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, although in some cases not as early as might have been expected. Georgiana Burne-Jones, in her Memorials of her husband, remembered that in early 1865, soon after they had moved to their new house at 41 Kensington Square, that “Gabriel, too, dropped in one night, bringing with him ‘a Frenchman of great celebrity named Legros’”(Vol. I, 288).
Legros quickly became a welcome member of the Rossetti circle. On July 16, 1863 Legros dined at Rossetti’s with Whistler, G. P. Boyce, A. C. Swinburne, W. M. Rossetti, and Monckton Milnes. George Price Boyce recalled in his diary that on February 5, 1864 he had dined with Whistler at Lindsey Row and on leaving he and Legros went into Rossetti’s studio. (Surtees, Boyce Diaries, 39). In December 1864 Legros dined at Rossetti’s with Madox Brown, W. M. Rossetti, James Smetham and Frederic Shields. On March 2, 1865 Legros and his wife dined with D. G. Rossetti, his mother and his brother William, as well as Ford and Emma Madox Brown. Later in March 1865 Legros dined at the Burne-Jones’s, together with William Morris, Edward Poynter, and Rebecca Solomon. Legros was included in a party at Rossetti’s house on April 12, 1865 that was attended by many members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle including Burne-Jones, Morris, W. M. Rossetti, William Bell Scott, Arthur Hughes, Alexander Munro, A. C. Swinburne, F. G. Stephens, Philip Webb, and Ford Madox Brown. A little later in the summer more or less the same group reassembled at Madox Brown’s house at 13 Fortess Terrace. On May 2, 1865 Legros dined at Rossetti’s house with W. M. Rossetti, Whistler, Boyce, and Charles Augustus Howell. In December 1865, just before the Madox Browns left Kentish Town for Fitzroy Square, Legros attended a dinner party at their home that also included Burne-Jones, Morris and their wives, Whistler, and D. G. Rossetti. On May 13, 1867 Legros attended a dinner at the home of Charles Augustus Howell, which also included D. G. Rossetti, W. M. Rossetti, E. Burne-Jones, G. P. Boyce, and others. Based on letters and diary entries from the period it is therefore quite obvious that in the 1860s Legros was considered an integral member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle.
Unlike his friendship with Whistler, Legros’s friendship with the Rossetti brothers endured, although it certainly became not as close as it had been for the first three or four years following their initial meeting in 1863. On July 12, 1868 William Michael Rossetti mentions that he lunched with Legros who had various pictures in hand, including a portrait of Edward Burne-Jones, “all but finished, excellent” (Rossetti, Rossetti Papers, 318). On February 25, 1871 W. M. Rossetti met Legros at an exhibition in support of the Distressed Peasantry of France as a result of the Franco-Prussian War. The exhibition was held at the premises of the French dealer Paul Durand-Ruel and had opened on December 17, 1870. Rossetti’s diary records:“Visited the exhibition at 168, Bond Street in aid of the distressed French, and met Legros there – first time this long while”(Bornand, Diary, 48). The Rossetti brothers had largely lost touch with Legros following his falling out with Whistler, especially after Dante Gabriel became more reclusive later in life. William Michael noted that after the Whistler fight “since then I have seldom encountered him again, though retaining my high estimate of his art, and my entire good-will towards himself” (Rossetti, Reminiscences, Vol. II, 323).
Legros made portraits of many of his friends within the Pre-Raphaelite circle, including some of the “Paris Gang” who had trained in Paris at Gleyre’s studio in the late 1850s. He did oil portraits of William Michael Rossetti in c.1864 (private collection), Edward Burne-Jones in 1868-69 (Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum) and Thomas Woolner in 1874 (Ipswich Borough Museums and Galleries). He also executed drawings and/or prints, generally etchings, of such artists as Frederic Leighton, G. F. Watts, Edward Poynter, Val Prinsep, and Thomas Woolner. A red chalk drawing of D. G. Rossetti, entitled Study, Head of a Bearded Man, is in the collection of the University College London Art Museum.
Bibliography
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Created 13 November 2022