Sunday 23 May 2021

DGR by Legros

 

                                     


Donato Esposito recently uncovered this chalk drawing by Alphonse Legros within the Slade School collection [where Legros taught] at UCL and correctly identified it as a portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Comparing it  and especially the not yet entirely receded hairline, with the photos of DGR taken in October 1863 by Lewis Carroll [as he then wasn't] the portrait must have been drawn around the same season, Rossetti's first summer in Chelsea, when he frequently invited guests.   Legros was there on 16 July, for example, in company with Swinburne, Whistler and some other fellows.

In the Legros collection at UCL, mostly comprising etchings, are a few other unidentified sitters.  Some may have been studies, others look like portraits, whose names have been lost.  These two for instance

    


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1 comment:

  1. Scott Thomas Buckle15 June 2021 at 06:57

    The head of the young man is probably drawn from an Italian model, possibly Alessandro di Marco, who modelled for Alphonse Legros regularly from the 1860s onwards. The study of the old man is a portrait of Legros himself, dating from the 1890s.

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