Trees (advertisement for Robert Gueraut)

Maker

(artist)
1837-1911

Title

Date of Production

circa 1877

Medium

Etching, black printing ink on paper

Dimensions

Height: 27.3 cm
Width: 18.5 cm

Accession Number

G.2017.XX.2

Mode of Acquisition

Donato Esposito, gift, 2017

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), who trained with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was part of the circle of young realist artists that included Henri Fantin-Latour and James McNeill Whistler; although he painted and produced sculpture, he is primarily remembered as an etcher. Thanks to his links with Whistler and, through him, the Ionides family, Legros settled in London in the late 1860s, where he remained for the rest of his life; upon Edward John Poynter’s retirement from the Slade in 1876, he took up a professorship which he held until 1893, during which time he introduced etching to the syllabus.

The present work was created to advertise the business of the framer and picture restorer Robert Gueraut, like Legros a French expatriate based in London. The composition is dominated by two rugged trees growing out of an earthen bank with Gueraut’s name etched discreetly on a wooden sign at middle right. This impression once formed part of the collection of Frank E. Bliss, who compiled an early catalogue raisonné of Legros’s oeuvre.

Provenance

Thomas Glen Arthur (British, 1857–1907; Lugt 129); Frank E. Bliss (American, 1847–1930; Lugt 265; Sulis Fine Art, Bradford-on-Avon, from whom purchased by Donato Esposito on 7 October 2014.

Inscriptions

Inscription: bottom left corner: 164 IV (handwritten in pencil)

Inscription: bottom right corner: 4° Stat and black ink stamp: BLISS (handwritten in pencil)

Inscription: Near top edge:42, B 1/9/76 (handwritten in pencil)

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