Cardinal Manning

Alphonse Legros (1837–1911) was an Anglo-French etcher, lithographer, painter and medallist. An accomplished creator of macabre allegories and realist scenes of the French countryside, he made a massive impact on the British Etching Revival.

Born in Dijon, a move to Paris by his family in 1851 saw the fourteen-year-old Legros working as a scene-painter of opera sets. During this time Legros also received further training at the École Impériale de Dessin, Paris, under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802–1897), whose method of teaching required students to copy Louvre works through mental recollection alone – emphasising the importance of a strong visual memory. Although Legros would spend much of his life living in Britain, his subject matter stayed distinctly French. His landscapes were enriched by memories of time spent during his childhood.

Legros moved to London in 1863, taught as Master of etching at the South Kensington School of Art in 1875 and was made Slade Professor at University College London in 1876. Upon his retirement in 1893, Legros appeared jaded about his time spent teaching, allegedly saying ‘vingt ans perdus’ – ‘twenty years lost’. Despite this disillusionment, during this time Legros shaped the future of the British Etching Revival through his notable students, such as William Strang and Charles Holroyd. Students and critics both noted his insistence on the quality of line which laid the foundation for the ‘Slade tradition’ of fine draughtsmanship.

Legros’ works exhibit less economy of line than the younger generation of etching revivalists; as a result, his scenes of allegory and peasant life in the French landscape are characterised by bold outlines and heavy crosshatching. He was a terrific technician, evident in his use of etching and drypoint alike.

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This print is a head-and-shoulders portrait lithograph of the Catholic Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892). It is a close, delicate study of the cardinal’s face in the last years of his life (it probably dates from 1891, the year before his death). Manning's cap and robes of office are only lightly suggested; attention is focussed on his face. Legros has used a light, smooth line to convey the Cardinal’s age and sombre temperament.

Legros earned a high reputation as a skilled portraitist, and as a result we know many prominent figures of Victorian society through such works.. Manning is no exception. His likeness was also immortalised by Legros in a bronze medal (Tate Britain and elsewhere). Manning was not only a prominent but a controversial and ultimately beloved figure in the public life of Victorian Britain. He had begun his ecclesiastical career as an Anglican, but following doubts about the legitimacy of the church and complex theological disagreements with some of its doctrines, he converted to Catholicism midway through his career to the shock of many.

He was also controversial because of his views on the church’s responsibility to the poor. He believed that it was the role of the church to be "the Mother, Friend and Protectress of the People. As our Divine Saviour lived among persons of the people, so lives His Church"  (Manning, quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). He acted on his beliefs; he was appointed to the Royal Commission into the housing of the working classes in 1884, and in 1889 he was asked to negotiate during a dockworkers strike by one of the strike leaders, Ben Tillett, and the radical journalist Margaret Harkness. Manning also practised what he preached in terms of how he chose to live:

'It is not surprising that Londoners grew to love Manning. He was always in their midst; and the doors of Archbishop House, an ugly barrack-like building on the corner of Carlisle Place and Francis Street, where the cardinal lived in an atmosphere of bleak austerity, were open to all comers, who rarely went away unsatisfied, because Manning was prodigal in his charity. To the end of his life, he preached two or three times every Sunday, usually choosing churches in the poorest parts of his diocese. He never took a holiday.' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

In Manning then, Legros would have found a subject whose life was compatible with his art. Legros’s realistic, elegant style was suited to depictions of piety and he gained acclaim back in the 1860s  for his depictions of praying peasants and clergy, as well as performing choirs. As an artist from an impoverished rural background who initially struggled with making a living in his early careere, Legros would almost certainly have appreciated Manning’s mission to improve the lives of London’s working classes.

Sources:

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/34480 (Oxford Dictionary of Biography – Alphonse Legros)

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17970 (Oxford Dictionary of Biography – Henry Edward Manning)

Malcolm Salaman, Modern Masters of Alphonse Legros (The Studio: London, 1926)

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art    September 2018

Sources:

Maurice Harold Grant, ‘A Dictionary of British Etchers’, (London: Rockliff, 1953), pp. 127–128

Timothy Wilcox, ‘Legros, Alphonse (1837–1911)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004): https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/34480

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Legros

Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   July 2018