International studio (20.1903)

sheer observation of popular life, as is seen in his
his Aik/%-Azw/<^7'.s', his &c.,
whom we know by means of his paintings, together
with all the other honest, humble folk who throng
his plates—milk-girls, egg-sellers, peasant girls going
to market, all, as a rule, dressed in the sober but
spruce style of the women of Boulogne, a town he
often visited, his mother living there. Then we
have men cutting faggots, coal-men, harvesters, and
frequently gipsies, vagabonds and old beggars, for
whom he had a special tenderness.
From the point of view of form and style Legros'
work is somewhat complex in character. It would
appear to be divided into two great periods, each
possessing a distinctly different physiognomy.
Thus the whole of his early period has a savour
rough, keen, and primitive, a picturesque and at
times a minute realism, which was bound to appeal
specially to the pre-Raphaelite circle into which he

was about to enter. This may be
discovered the more easily by
examining his etchings, which at
that time were marked by a certain
ardent and somewhat wild sense of
poetry.
His favourite masters just then
were the German and Italian " prim-
itives." On arriving in England
he quickly modihed his style ; not,
to be sure, that he copied the
English artists, with whom he lived
on terms of excellent comradeship ;
on the contrary it cannot be said
that he assimilated anything from
this association, remaining absolutely
refractory to the British spirit.
But, isolated as he was from the
combative circle of his first years of
struggle, forming about him a sort
of separating zone, within which he
was free from immediate influences,
he simply associated himself with a
setof chosen friends—faithful friends,
faithfully loved, friends with venera-
tion styled Masters — Holbein,
Mantegna, Albrecht Diirer, Rem-
brandt, Titian and Poussin, not
forgetting Ingres, whose pupil he
had always longed to be. These
names alone reveal the changes in
his artistic sense and in his tech-
nique. He abandoned his primitive
" precocity," to the great regret of
the critics who had applauded his
early efforts. He renounced the charm of colour-
in favour of the manlier beauty of design ; he lost
something of his strange accent, but he gained in
simplicity, in grandeur, in dignity, in unity; in a
word, he entered the ranks of what are known as
the classics.
Space prevents me from referring here to his
innumerable pen and pencil drawings, also to his
silver and gold point work, wherein, reviving the
old methods, he immortalised the most famous of
his contemporaries both in England and in France.
This taste for old techniques, for disused methods,
led him, even from the outset of his labours,
towards etching ; thence, one day, he was attracted
towards medal work, which, as he said, was part of
the painter's craft, and, in fact, was restored to
honour by painters themselves.
It. was inevitable that some day or other he
must attempt sculpture. His curiosity led him to