machine-shops, boiler-works, and dyeing and printing of woven goods, and thread. Close by, the Lombard League defeated Frederick Barbarossa in 1176; a monument in commemoration of the battle was erected on the field in 1876, while there is another by Butti erected in 1900 in the Piazza Federico Barbarossa.
LEGOUVÉ, GABRIEL JEAN BAPTISTE ERNEST WILFRID
(1807–1903), French dramatist, son of the poet Gabriel Legouvé
(1764–1812), who wrote a pastoral La Mort d’Abel (1793) and a
tragedy of Epicharis et Néron, was born in Paris on the 5th of
February 1807. His mother died in 1810, and almost immediately
afterwards his father was removed to a lunatic
asylum. The child, however, inherited a considerable fortune,
and was carefully educated. Jean Nicolas Bouilly (1763–1842)
was his tutor, and early instilled into the young Legouvé a
passion for literature, to which the example of his father and
of his grandfather, J. B. Legouvé (1729–1783), predisposed him.
As early as 1829 he carried away a prize of the French Academy
for a poem on the discovery of printing; and in 1832 he published
a curious little volume of verses, entitled Les Morts Bizarres.
In those early days Legouvé brought out a succession of novels,
of which Edith de Falsen enjoyed a considerable success. In
1847 he began the work by which he is best remembered, his
contributions to the development and education of the female
mind, by lecturing at the College of France on the moral history
of women: these discourses were collected into a volume in
1848, and enjoyed a great success. Legouvé wrote considerably
for the stage, and in 1849 he collaborated with A. E. Scribe in
Adrienne Lecouvreur. In 1855 he brought out his tragedy of
Médée, the success of which had much to do with his election
to the French Academy. He succeeded to the fauteuil of J. A.
Ancelot, and was received by Flourens, who dwelt on the plays
of Legouvé as his principal claim to consideration. As time
passed on, however, he became less prominent as a playwright,
and more so as a lecturer and propagandist on woman’s rights
and the advanced education of children, in both of which directions
he was a pioneer in French society. His La Femme en France
au XIX me siècle (1864), reissued, much enlarged, in 1878; his
Messieurs les enfants (1868), his Conférences Parisiennes (1872),
his Nos filles et nos fils (1877), and his Une Éducation de jeune
fille (1884) were works of wide-reaching influence in the moral
order. In 1886–1887 he published, in two volumes, his Soixante
ans de souvenirs, an excellent specimen of autobiography. He
was raised in 1887 to the highest grade of the Legion of Honour,
and held for many years the post of inspector-general of female
education in the national schools. Legouvé was always an
advocate of physical training. He was long accounted one
of the best shots in France, and although, from a conscientious
objection, he never fought a duel, he made the art of fencing
his lifelong hobby. After the death of Désiré Nisard in 1888,
Legouvé became the “father” of the French Academy. He
died on the 14th of March 1903.
LEGROS, ALPHONSE (1837– ), painter and etcher, was
born at Dijon on the 8th of May 1837. His father was an
accountant, and came from the neighbouring village of Veronnes.
Young Legros frequently visited the farms of his relatives, and
the peasants and landscapes of that part of France are the
subjects of many of his pictures and etchings. He was sent to
the art school at Dijon with a view to qualifying for a trade,
and was apprenticed to Maître Nicolardo, house decorator and
painter of images. In 1851 Legros left for Paris to take another
situation; but passing through Lyons he worked for six months
as journeyman wall-painter under the decorator Beuchot, who
was painting the chapel of Cardinal Bonald in the cathedral.
In Paris he studied with Cambon, scene-painter and decorator
of theatres, an experience which developed a breadth of touch
such as Stanfield and Cox picked up in similar circumstances.
At this time he attended the drawing-school of Lecoq de Boisbaudran.
In 1855 Legros attended the evening classes of the
École des Beaux Arts, and perhaps gained there his love of
drawing from the antique, some of the results of which may be
seen in the Print Room of the British Museum. He sent two
portraits to the Salon of 1857: one was rejected, and formed part of the exhibition of protest organized by Bonvin in his studio; the other, which was accepted, was a profile portrait of his father. This work was presented to the museum at Tours by the artist when his friend Cazin was curator. Champfleury saw the work in the Salon, and sought out the artist to enlist him in the small army of so-called “Realists,” comprising (round the noisy glory of Courbet) all those who raised protest against the academical trifles of the degenerate Romantics. In 1859 Legros’s “Angelus” was exhibited, the first of those quiet church interiors, with kneeling figures of patient women, by which he is best known as a painter. “Ex Voto,” a work of great power and insight, painted in 1861, now in the museum at Dijon, was received by his friends with enthusiasm, but it only obtained a mention at the Salon. Legros came to England in 1863, and in 1864 married Miss Frances Rosetta Hodgson. At first he lived by his etching and teaching. He then became teacher of etching at the South Kensington School of Art, and in 1876 Slade Professor at University College, London. He was naturalized as an Englishman in 1881, and remained at University College seventeen years. His influence there was exerted to encourage a certain distinction, severity and truth of character in the work of his pupils, with a simple technique and a respect for the traditions of the old masters, until then somewhat foreign to English art. He would draw or paint a torso or a head before the students in an hour or even less, so that the attention of the pupils might not be dulled. As students had been known to take weeks and even months over a single drawing, Legros ordered the positions of the casts in the Antique School to be changed once every week. In the painting school he insisted upon a good outline, preserved by a thin rub in of umber, and then the work was to be finished in a single painting, “premier coup.” Experiments in all varieties of art work were practised; whenever the professor saw a fine example in the museum, or when a process interested him in a workshop, he never rested until he had mastered the technique and his students were trying their ’prentice hands at it. As he had casually picked up the art of etching by watching a comrade in Paris working at a commercial engraving, so he began the making of medals after a walk in the British Museum, studying the masterpieces of Pisanello, and a visit to the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris. Legros considered the traditional journey to Italy a very important part of artistic training, and in order that his students should have the benefit of such study he devoted a part of his salary to augment the income available for a travelling studentship. His later works, after he resigned his professorship in 1892, were more in the free and ardent manner of his early days—imaginative landscapes, castles in Spain, and farms in Burgundy, etchings like the series of “The Triumph of Death,” and the sculptured fountains for the gardens of the duke of Portland at Welbeck.
Pictures and drawings by Legros, besides those already mentioned, may be seen in the following galleries and museums: “Amende Honorable,” “Dead Christ,” bronzes, medals and twenty-two drawings, in the Luxembourg, Paris; “Landscape,” “Study of a Head,” and portraits of Browning, Burne-Jones, Cassel, Huxley and Marshall, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington; “Femmes en prière,” National Gallery of British Art; “The Tinker,” and six other works from the Ionides Collection, bequeathed to South Kensington; “Christening,” “Barricade,” “The Poor at Meat,” two portraits and several drawings and etchings, collection of Lord Carlisle; “Two Priests at the Organ,” “Landscape” and etchings, collection of Rev. Stopford Brooke; “Head of a Priest,” collection of Mr Vereker Hamilton; “The Weed-burner,” some sculpture and a large collection of etchings and drawings, Mr Guy Knowles; “Psyche,” collection of Mr L. W. Hodson; “Snow Scene,” collection of Mr G. F. Watts, R.A.; thirty-five drawings and etchings, the Print Room, British Museum; “Jacob’s Dream” and twelve drawings of the antique, Cambridge; “Saint Jerome,” two studies of heads and some drawings, Manchester; “The Pilgrimage” and “Study made before the Class,” Liverpool Walker Art Gallery; “Study of Heads,” Peel Park Museum, Salford.
See Dr Hans W. Singer, “Alphonse Legros,” Die graphischen Künste (1898); Léonce Bénédite, “Alphonse Legros,” Revue de l’art (Paris, 1900); Cosmo Monkhouse, “Professor Legros,” Magazine of Art (1882). (C. H.*)
