Sunrise, Woods of Clamard (Lever du soleil, bois de Clamard)
1826 to 1850
Medium
drypoint
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of George Matthew Adams in memory of his mother, Lydia Havens Adams
Accession Number
1948.6.7
Art Historical Context
As visitors to the National Gallery of Art, find a moment of quiet beauty in Alphonse Legros'sSunrise, Woods ofamard (Lever du soleil, bois Clamard)*, a drypoint print from around 1826–1850. Legros, a 19th-century French-born who later worked in Britain, captures the gentle dawn light filtering through the woods near Paris's Bois de Clamart. intimate landscape invites contemplation of nature's awakening, with soft shadows and emerging warmth evoking the Romantic spirit of the era. The artwork's medium—drypoint—is key to its allure. In this intaglio technique, Legros scratched directly into a ...
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...