Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/466

 he was commissioned by the Duke of Portland to design fountains for the gardens at Welbeck. These were carried out with the help of Professor Lanteri. In the same year he undertook the decoration for the top of the Bank of England at the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria.

Legros first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864, and sent paintings or etchings each year till 1874. Subsequently he only exhibited at the Academy in 1881 and 1882, in the last year sending six bronze medals. He was elected fellow of the Society of Painter-Etchers in July 1880, but resigned in 1885. He was re-elected a fellow in April 1895, and made an honorary fellow in Dec. 1910. He was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Scottish Academy in March 1911. He was also a member of the International Society and of the Society of Twelve.

For many years Legros had been devoted to the work of Alfred Stevens [q.v.], and his last labour was to serve as the president of the committee of the Stevens Memorial, now at the Tate Gallery. He was present at the opening of the exhibition of Stevens's work held at the Tate Gallery to commemorate the presentation of that memorial on 15 Nov. 1911. He died at his home in Watford on 7 Dec. following, and was buried in Hammersmith cemetery; almost his last words were those of gratitude at the recognition of Stevens, saying ‘Il a été reconnu.’

He married in 1864, the year after he came to England, Frances Rosetta, third daughter of Samuel Hodgson of Kendal. Of their four sons and five daughters two sons and three daughters survived him.

He made several portraits of himself at various periods of his life, both etchings and drawings; one, in gold-point, he did by invitation for the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. In addition to the portrait by Fantin-Latour in ‘Hommage à Delacroix,’ there is an early head of Legros by the same artist, which was in the collection of Mr. Van Wisselingh. The present writer has a profile study in oils and two etchings. A bronze head of Legros by Rodin is in the Manchester City Art Gallery and a terra-cotta head by Dalou in the museum at Dijon.

Many pictures and drawings by Legros besides those mentioned are in public galleries and in important private collections. At the Luxembourg, Paris, are the painting ‘L'Amende Honorable,’ ‘Dead Christ,’ and portrait of Gambetta, with bronzes, medals, and some twenty-two drawings. At Dijon is the ‘Ex Voto,’ his masterpiece. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, are landscapes, ‘The Tinker,’ the study of a head, and the portraits (among others) of Browning, Burne-Jones, and Huxley. At the National Gallery of British Art are ‘Femmes en prière’ and a portrait. In the collection of Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle, are ‘A Christening,’ ‘Barricade,’ ‘Psyche,’ ‘The Poor at Meat,’ two portraits and several drawings and etchings. Thirty-five drawings and etchings are in the print room British Museum. ‘Jacob's Dream’ and twelve drawings after the antique are at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His work is also represented at Manchester, Liverpool, and Peel Park Museum, Salford. Of Legros's etchings the principal collections are those of the late Mr. T. G. Arthur of Carrick House, Ayr, and Mr. Guy Knowles of 17 Kensington Gore, London; these two collections would form almost a complete set. Mr. F. E. Bliss of 21 Holland Park, W., has some 900 proofs in his possession. Mr. Guy Knowles also possesses the best collection of Legros's sculpture and medals, including the mask of Miss Swainson, two masks for a fountain, and the highly finished little torso, a cast of which is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. An exhibition of sixty of his paintings and a number of etchings, lithographs, drawings, and bronzes was held, shortly after his death, in the National Gallery of British Art, Millbank. [Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre, gravé et lithographié, de M. Alphonse Legros, Slade Professor of Art au Collège de l'Université de Londres, Professeur de gravure à l'eauforte à l'Ecole de South Kensington, par MM. A. P. Malassis et A. W. Thibaudeau, 1855–1877, Paris, édit. 1877; Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétiques, Salon, 1859, et l'Art romantique, peintres et aquafortistes; Castagnary, Salons (1857–1870), 2 vols. Paris, 1892; Alphonse Legros, aquafortiste, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1 April 1867, by Ch. Gueullette; Exposition d'œuvres d'art exécutées en noir et blanc, by Louis Décamps, and an unsigned letter by Dalou in L'Art, 27 Aug. 1876; M. Alphonse Legros, au salon du 1875, by A. P. Malassis; Contemporary Portraits, No. xxvi., by W. E. Henley in University Mag., Feb. 1880; Four Masters of Etching, by F. Wedmore, Fine Art Society, 1883. See also the Critiques of Paul Mantz, Lagrange, Burty, Duranty, Gonse (with Legros's Study of the prints of Rembrandt, 1 Dec. 1885), in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts; Rapport à l'Académie de Dijon, par Henri Chabeuf, 1888; Les Graveurs du xix,e siècle, Legros, by Henri Béraldi, Paris, 1889;