Louis Legrand Artworks: Forgotten Precursors to Toulouse-Lautrec

Summary: Collections, galleries and museums cull Louis Legrand artworks even though posterity credits artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec with Legrand's trendsetting.

Danseuse (planche en couleur d'apres la peinture) by French artist Louis Legrand (Sep. 28, 1863-June 12, 1951); Camille Mauclair's Louis Legrand (1910), opposite page 222: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive

Louis Legrand artworks appeal to an assorted, albeit abbreviated, audience of art appreciators and art collectors even though their thematic approaches to Parisian night life anticipate other, more famous French 19th-century artists.

Louis Auguste Mathieu Legrand (Sep. 28, 1863-June 12, 1951) became a bank clerk and then an artist of book and magazine illustrations, engravings, etchings and paintings. The compositions Naturalism, against Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (April 2, 1840-Sep. 28, 1902), and Prostitution caused Legrand's obscenity conviction and, for not paying fines, incarceration. Dancers respectively dominated Gil Blas illustré ("illustrated magazine"), Cours de danse fin-de-siècle ("End-of-the-century Dance Classes") and Petites du ballet ("Little Ballerinas") in 1891, 1892 and 1893.

Louis Legrand artworks respectively embellished Quinze Histoires d'Edgar Poe ("15 Stories") and Cinq contes parisiens de Guy de Maupassant ("Five Parisian Tales") in 1897 and 1905.

The aquatint and drypoint Fin ("End") and the aquatint Joie Maternelle ("Maternal Joy") from 1900 fit into Yale University's Henry Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library collection.

The aquatint Chansons en Si and the black crayon and pastel watercolor Songs in the Key of B grace The Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have the untitled graphite on paper drawing of a man holding a rope ladder to help a female climber. The California museums-based collections include Titi, ma petite chatte bien aimée morte à 11 ans le 2 février 1912, drypoint of Legrand's beloved dead 11-year-old kitty-cat.

The color-etched aquatint Les Cyclistes ("The Bicyclists"), lithograph Sur le Banc ("On the Beach") and prints The Gleaners and Ophele join California's 36-plus Louis Legrand artworks.

Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art keeps the photolithographic illustration for Excentricités de la Danse ("Eccentricities of the Dance") from Gil Blas Illustré ("Gil Blas [Magazine] Illustrated").

Galleries, such as Armstrong Fine Art in Chicago, Illinois, and museums in Europe and North America list Louis Legrand artworks among their acquisitions of "remarkable artists." Richard Reed Armstrong's (June 13, 1944- June 8, 2013) Armstrong Fine Art, gallery in Chicago, Illinois, of dealer Bernard Derroitte since 2006, lists Louis Legrand artworks. The couple hundred to couple thousand dollars for Louis Legrand artworks never match sales of Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (Nov. 24, 1864-Sep. 9, 1901) artworks. And yet Legrand first nestled bar-hopping, café-going, cancan-kicking, music hall-dancing women of Paris's 18th arrondissement (district) into Belle Époque ("Beautiful Era," 1890-1914) engravings, etchings and paintings.

École des Beaux-Arts de Dijon ("School of Fine Arts of Dijon") curricula and Félicien Rops's (July 7, 1833-Aug. 23, 1898) engraving courses occasioned Louis Legrand artworks.

Anatole Devosge (Jan. 13, 1770-Dec. 8, 1850) prize-winning in 1883 and Siegfried Bing (Feb. 26, 1838-Sep. 6, 1905) gallery exhibitions in 1896 prompted Legrand's prescient productivity.

Louis Legrand artworks queued up in Paris's 1900 Exposition Universelle ("Universal Exposition") as silver medal winners, and 1902 Salon des artistes français ("Salon of French Artists"). They respectively rated Paris's Georges Petit (March 11, 1856-May 12, 1920) Gallery and Paul Durand-Ruel (Oct. 31, 1831-Feb. 5, 1922) Gallery exhibitions in 1904 and 1911. Dancers and rural Breton families respectively surfaced again in Petite Classe ("Small Class") in 1908 and anew in Au cap de la chèvre ("On Goat Promontory").

What thrust the trendsetting National Order of the Legion of Honour knight (chevalier de l'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur) of 1906 into posthumous collective oblivion?

Louis Legrand's etched self-portrait, with inscription "à Eugène Rodrigues, mon meilleur ami," on cover of Louis Legrand Peintre et Graveur by Erastatèn Ramiro (pseudonym of Eugène Rodrigues): Not in copyright, via Internet Archive

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Danseuse (planche en couleur d'apres la peinture) by French artist Louis Legrand (Sep. 28, 1863-June 12, 1951); Camille Mauclair's Louis Legrand (1910), opposite page 222: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/louislegrandpein00maucuoft#page/n284/mode/1up

Louis Legrand's etched self-portrait, with inscription "à Eugène Rodrigues, mon meilleur ami," on cover of Louis Legrand Peintre et Graveur by Erastatèn Ramiro (pseudonym of Eugène Rodrigues): Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/gri_33125012871931/page/n6/mode/1up

For further information:

Arwas, Victor. 2006. Louis Legrand: Catalogue Raisonné. London, England: Papadakis.

"Chansons en Si: Songs in the Key of B, c. 1910." The Cleveland Museum of Art > Search the Collection > Louis Legrand.
Available @ http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1992.342

"Les Cyclistes." Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco > Search the Collections > Louis Legrand.
Available @ https://art.famsf.org/louis-auguste-mathieu-legrand/les-cyclistes-19633030771

"The Gleaners." Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco > Search the Collections > Louis Legrand.
Available @ https://art.famsf.org/louis-auguste-mathieu-legrand/gleaners-19633031740

Kahn, Gustave. 1908. "Louis Legrand et Son Oeurvre." L'Art et Le Beau, no. 5. Paris, France: La Librarie Artistique et Littéraire.
Available via Gallica @ https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k97602337/f11.image.texteImage

"Louis Legrand." Museum of Modern Art > Art and Artists.
Available @ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/13937?artist_id=7675&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist

Mauclair, Camille. 1910. Louis Legrand, Peintre et Graveur. Paris, France: H. Floury; G. Pellet.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/louislegrandpein00maucuoft

Marriner, Derdriu. 24 May 2013. "Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Painting Rousse in Elementary Episode The Woman." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/05/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec-painting.html

"Ophele." Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco > Search the Collections > Louis Legrand.
Available @ https://art.famsf.org/louis-auguste-mathieu-legrand/ophele-19633031743

Ramiro, E. (Erastène). 1896. Louis Legrand Peintre-Graveur. Catalogue de son œuvre gravé et lithographié. Paris, France: H. Floury.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/gri_33125012871931#page/n9/mode/2up

"Recent Acquisitions." Yale University > Yale University Library > Medical Library.
Available @ https://library.medicine.yale.edu/historical/explore/acq

"Songs in the Key of B, c. 1910." The Cleveland Museum of Art > Search the Collection > Louis Legrand.
Available @ http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1980.117

"Sur le on banc." Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco > Search the Collections > Louis Legrand.
Available @ https://art.famsf.org/louis-auguste-mathieu-legrand/sur-le-banc-19633031748

"Titi ma petite chatte bien aimee a Pierre Loti Morte a Mans le 2 Fevrier, 1912." Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco > Search the Collections > Louis Legrand.
Available @ https://art.famsf.org/louis-auguste-mathieu-legrand/titi-ma-petite-chatte-bien-aimee-pierre-loti-morte-mans-le-2-fevrier

"Untitled." Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco > Search the Collections > Louis Legrand.
Available @ https://art.famsf.org/louis-auguste-mathieu-legrand/untitled-199493