Chercheurs du Trésor. Signed in pencil, lower right * Entrée du Champ. Second state (of 3). Signed in pencil, lower right * La Lisière de Fôret. Various sizes and conditions. Very good impressions.
Whistler met Legros (1837-1911) through Henri Fantin-Latour in Paris during the fall of 1858. The three became such close friends that Whistler dubbed their artistic trio the 'Société des Trois.' Not achieving any notariety in Paris, Legros jumped at Whistler's invitation to come to London in 1863. Over the next few decades, he became successful as a printmaking teacher (at South Kensington and later as Slade Professor at the University of London from 1876 to 1894). He and Whistler drifted apart by the mid-1860s, evidently because he was disliked by Whistler's mistress Joanna Hiffernan.
Legros was a talented portraitist and landscape etcher. While his landscape plates ultimately look back to those of Rembrandt and other 17th-century Dutch printmakers, there are many affinities with Whistler too, notably the bold, loosely-etched scenes like Whistler's Landscape with the Horse (lot 35). Wright 697; Bliss 296 and 504.
