L'Angélus, 1859. Oil on canvas, 25 ¾ x 31 ⅞ inches (65.5 × 80.9 cm). Private collection.
The angelus is a Roman Catholic prayer of devotion for the Incarnation, with its roots dating back to the 13th century. It is practiced by reciting Biblical verses and prayers in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. It is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell. The most well known painting of this subject, also completed the same year of 1859, is Jean-François Millet’s painting of peasants bowing their heads in prayer at dusk and listening to the Angelus bell tolling from the church seen in the distant background.
Legros exhibited L’Angelus, the first of his major religious works, at the Paris Salon in 1859. It was a quiet religious picture, influenced by the work of the early Renaissance Old Masters, and painted in a naïve style with a flat, somewhat archaic perspective and awkward figures. This rather austere pious painting with its uncompromising realism was therefore, in general, not warmly received either by critics or the general public. It was, however, admired by many of his fellow artists in the so-called “Realist” school. It was praised by Charles Baudelaire in the Révue Française: “J’ignore si MM. Legros et Amand Gautier possèdent la foi comme l’entend l’Eglise, mais très-certainement ils ont eu, en composant chacun un excellent ouvrage de piété, la foi suffisante pour l’objet en vue. Ils ont prouvé que, même au XIXe siècle, l’artiste peut produire un bon tableau de religion, pourvu que son imagination soit apte à s’élever jusque-là” (331).
Menard in The Portfolio noted the influence of the Old Masters on Legros’s work even at this early stage of his career: “Although the artist has not borrowed his subject from a text of sacred history, he has sought an emotion of sincere piety which is not often found in the official pictures ordered for our churches, but the secret of which may be discovered in the Florentine frescoes of the fifteenth century (115).
This painting was the beginning of Legros reinventing contemporary religious painting. A critic, writing as “Appreciator,” in The International Interpreter in 1922 described this painting thusly: There is ‘L’Angelus’, painted in his twenty-first year, his masterpiece, I should say, pre-Raphaelite in its still intensity, with a dash of Courbet” (372).
Francis Seymour Haden, James Whistler’s brother-in-law, bought Legros’s painting prior to Legros’s move to London in 1863. This led to the famous scandal, as reported by the Pennells, where the painting was retouched by Haden:
“He [Legros] had, before coming, sold a church interior to Haden, who liked it, though he found the floor out of perspective. One day he took it to the room upstairs where he did his own etchings, and turned the key. When it reappeared the floor was in perspective according to Haden. A new gorgeous frame was bought, and the picture was hung conspicuously in the drawing-room. Whistler thought Haden seemed restive when he heard that Legros was coming, but nothing was said. The first day Legros was impressed: he had been accustomed to seeing himself in cheap frames, if in any frame at all. But, gradually, he looked beyond the frame, and Haden‘s work dawned upon him - that he could not stand. What was he to do? he asked Whistler. Run off with it, Whistler suggested. They got it down, called a four-wheeler and carried it away to the studio – ‘our own little kopje,’ for Whistler told us the story in the days of the Boer war. Haden discovered his loss as soon as in a rage, hurried after them to the studio. But when he sought there on an easel, when, set of attempting to hide it, Legros was openly restoring the perspective according to his idea, well. Haden discovered his loss as soon as he got home and, in a rage, hurried after them to the studio. But when he saw it there on an easel, when, instead of attempting to hide it, Legros was openly restoring the perspective according to his idea, well, there was nothing to say. All the same, it must have been aggravating” [77-78]
Bibliography
Baudelaire, Charles. “Salon of 1859,” Révue Française, (1859): 331-34.
“Artists Who Matter XI.” The International Interpreter I (June 24, 1922): 370-72.
Ménard, René. “Alphonse Legros.” The Portfolio VI (January 1875): 115.
Pennell, Elizabeth R. and Joseph Pennell. The Life of James McNeill Whistler Vol. I. London: William Heinemann 1908.
Last modified 11 November 2022