Peasant Women of Boulogne (Paysannes des environs de Boulogne) . Etching and drypoint; 135/8 x 93/4 inches (34.6 x 24.7 cm) – sheet size; 9 x 6 inches (22.8 x 15.1 cm) – image size,
This etching of peasant women in the neighbourhood of Boulogne exists in five states. This is likely am impression of the 5th state as printed in The Portfolio in August 1873. P. G. Hamerton, the editor of The Portfolio, had these comments on Legros in this issue: “I should say that he is a poet full of deep gravity and pathos, always inclined to sober melancholy; sympathizing most often, and perhaps most easily, with lives that are saddened by isolation, and absorbed in the monotony of constantly-recurring thoughts; whilst at the same time, either from instinct or from some decided theory and preference, this poet chooses to express himself in the very simplest artistic language that is attainable...Never was any realism so remarkable for simplicity of purpose as that of the genuine French rustic school…These artists were neither influenced by the authority of the classics nor by the force of the reaction against them; they worked in a calm corner of their own, safe from the flux and reflux of the great currents of their time. M. Legros is one of them; but instead of going among the oxen and the labours of the fields, he prefers the solemnity of the village church, or the cathedral aisle, or the quiet monastery; and there he will watch his models, who know not that they are watched, and who reveal to him the secret of their meditations. [113-14]
This print is highly reminiscent of Legros’s many religious pictures of rural French peasant women, their local dress of distinctive bonnets and capes suggestive of certain areas of France, in this particular case around the area of Boulogne. The etching depicts three young peasant women seated together, their heads bowed and hands folded in contemplative prayer. At the feet of the second figure lies a small sack tied with string. The women sit in individual chairs rather than pews, perhaps suggestive of informal prayers in the home rather than as part of a religious congregation in a church.
Bibliography
Dodgson, Campbell: A catalogue of the etchings, drypoints and lithographs by Professor Alphonse Legros in the collection of Frank E. Bliss. London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1923, cat. no. 80.
Hamerton, Philip G. “Examples of Modern Etching. XX. Alphonse Legros.” The Portfolio IV (1873): 113-14.
Created 17 November 2022