Plain (La Plaine)
late 19th/early 20th century
Medium
drypoint and etching
Dimensions
sheet: 16.8 × 26.3 cm (6 5/8 × 10 3/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of E. Gerald Lamboley)
Accession Number
2015.143.1374
Art Historical Context
Alphonse Legros, a French-born artist who spent much of his career in Britain, created *Plain (La Plaine)* in the late 19th or early 20th century. Renowned for his contributions to the Etching Revival—a movement that revitalized printmaking as a fine art—Legros drew inspiration from masters like Rembrandt. This intimate landscape print exemplifies his realist style, capturing the expansive simplicity of a flat terrain with subtle atmospheric depth. Executed in drypoint and etching on a modest sheet measuring 16.8 × 26.3 cm, the work showcases Legros's technical mastery. Etching provides crisp...
About the Artist
Alphonse Legros · 1837–1911
Alphonse Legros (1837–1911) was born in Dijon, France, and trained in Paris at the drawing school of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose unconventional teaching method — which emphasised memory drawing and acute observation over academic convention — would leave a lasting mark on Legros's practice. At Lecoq's school he formed friendships with Jules Dalou and Auguste Rodin that endured throughout hi...