Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Prettejohn, Elizabeth

Titel

The Scandal of M. Alphonse Legros

Ist Teil von

• Art history, 2021-02, Vol.44 (1), p.78-107

Ort / Verlag

Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Wiley Online Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This essay asks why the art of Alphonse Legros (1837–1911) remained inconspicuous in the art history of the past generation, when the study of the nineteenth century played such a prominent role in the discipline. Legros's realist and politically committed practice is eminently suited to the art‐historical methods that dominated that period. He was an associate of Courbet and Whistler, and his work attracted comment from Charles Baudelaire, Walter Pater, and Roger Fry. Why, then, has he remained virtually invisible to art historians? The essay explores three ‘scandals’, or art‐historical blind spots, which have made Legros's art difficult to interpret: his decision to abandon Parisian modernism and ‘become British’; his choice of subject matter involving religious observance; and his lifelong commitment to the art of the past. It argues that Legros's example offers fresh insights into these three areas of growing concern to the art history of the future.