Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/464

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Lefroy
444
Legros

management of the cathedral, especially as to 'appropriated' seats, and he instituted a simple evening service. He paid attention to the fabric under the advice of John Loughborough Pearson, R.A. [q. v. Suppl. I]. The choir, the walls of which were unflaked and the pillars strengthened, was re-opened by Archbishop Benson [q. v. Suppl. I] on 1 May 1894; then the exterior, the cloisters, and the stonework of the nave were repaired with the help of Sir Samuel Hoare, M.P. Lefroy collected 6623l. for a new organ, which was dedicated on 12 Dec. 1899. His financial efforts on behalf of Norwich grammar school were equally successful.

Lefroy, who closely studied the problem of clergy sustentation, put forward at the church congress, Norwich, 1895, a scheme to which the Queen Victoria clergy fund of 1897 owes much. He sat for twenty- three years in convocation, where he, as elsewhere, preferred vigorous argument to gentle persuasion. He was a strong advocate of the reform both of convocation and of cathedral establishments.

Lefroy was devoted to Switzerland, and he was one of the summer chaplains of the Colonial and Continental Church Society annually from 1867 to the year of his death. From 1875 to 1878 he was a member of the Alpine Club, but although fond of mountain climbing made no great expeditions. He helped to build the English churches at Zermatt, Riffel Alp, Gletsch, and Adelboden. He preached in the church at Riffel Alp on 1 Aug. 1909, twenty-five years after he had opened it on 27 July 1884. Seized with illness just afterwards, he died at the Riffel hotel on 11 Aug. 1909, and was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Riffel Alp. The dean was twice married. By his second wife, Mary Ann, daughter of Charles MacIver, of Calderstone, Liverpool, whom he married at Malta on 11 Feb. 1878, he left two daughters, of whom Mary Ann is the wife of Sir Percy Bates, fourth baronet.

An oil painting by Blackden is at the Deanery, Norwich. Lefroy's published works include: 1. 'The Christian Ministry : its Origin, Constitution, Nature, and Work' (the Donnellan lectures, 1887-8), 1890. 2. 'Agoniæ Christi' ('Preachers of the Age' series), 1893. 3. 'The Immortality of Memory and other Sermons,' 1898. 4. 'Christian Science contrasted with the Christian Faith and with itself,' 1903.

[The Times, 12 Aug. 1909; Record, 13, 20, and 27 Aug., 3 Sept. 1909; Guardian, 18 Aug. 1909; Lefroy's introduction to Echoes from the Choir of Norwich Cathedral, 1894; Greater Britain Messenger, Oct. 1909; H. Leeds, Life of Dean Lefroy, Norwich, 1909; private information.]

E. H. P.


LEGROS, ALPHONSE (1837–1911), painter, sculptor, and etcher, born at Dijon on 8 May 1837, was the second son in a family of seven brothers and sisters of Lucien Auguste Legros, an accountant who came from the neighbouring village of Véronnes. His mother was Anne Victoire, daughter of Jean Baptiste Louis Barrie, mechanic, of Dijon. Legros spoke French all his life. Sent to the Ecole des Beaux- Arts at Dijon at an early age, he was intended to qualify for an artistic trade. To the end of his career early wanderings to the farms of his relatives around Dijon supplied him with subjects for his works. Leaving the Dijon school in 1850, he was apprenticed to one Maître Nicolardo, house decorator and painter of images. In 1851 he travelled towards Paris to take up another situation, but passing through Lyons he worked for six months as journeyman wall-painter with the decorator Beuchot, who was at work in the chapel of Cardinal Bonald in the cathedral. Legros was employed on the ornamental work in fresco. One day an Italian engaged in laying the mosaic pavement was in difficulties over the design, and asked Legros to draw it out for him. The boy designed it afresh, to the Italian's admiration. 'Ce fut,' Legros said, 'mon premier orgueil d'artiste et ma première sensation d'art.'

Arrived in Paris, Legros worked with Cambon, scene-painter and decorator of theatres, an experience which developed breadth of handling and decorative quality in his work and incidentally a gift for histrionic mimicry. At the same time he attended the drawing school of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran in the rue de l'Ecole de Médecine, a master who developed in his pupils a power of drawing from memory both scenes of nature and pictures in the Louvre. Legros, like his fellow-pupils Bonvin, Fantin-Latour, and Regamey, spent whole days in the Louvre, and the excellence of Legros's drawing from memory of Holbein's portrait of Erasmus excited Lecoq's especial interest in his pupil, who thenceforth worked in his master's studio. Legros's drawing of the Erasmus is reproduced in Lecoq's 'Training of the Memory of Art,' translated by L. D. Luard (1911). The profile portrait by Holbein had a lasting influence on Legros; it may be seen even in his later works, such as 'Prière de