Oil painting, 'Hilly Landscape', Alphonse Legros, 1876-1877

A hilly landscape with the spire of a church seen in the left background, shades of greens and bushes shape the hills declining towards the spectator.

Given by the artist

Given by the artist, 1877.

Historical significance: This painting is a fine example of Legros' landscape paintings. It shows a hilly landscape with the spire of Hampstead church seen in the distance, there are no other details which might precisely identify the site. The painting is a timed study, completed in the open air in front of students of the Slade School of Fine Art at University College, London where Legros held a professorship from 1876-1893.
Although landscape was not part of the official academic programme at the Slade School, Legros made a habit of taking groups of students out to paint in the countryside, often Hampstead Heath. In the foreground Legros experiments almost exclusively with shades of green, and the sketch recalls the vigour of his early studies under the influence of Courbet. Unlike Landscape, with Stream and Hills (CAI 27) and Landscape, with Road over a Hill (CAI 28), which are probably French landscape scenes assembled from scenes in the artist's memory, Hampstead Heath follows the French academic tradition of completing outdoor landscape sketches. One of Legros's landscapes, identified as depicting Hampstead Heath, was exhibited in Legros's 'Memorial Exhibition' of 1912 and is described in a letter from Philip Norman to F.E Bliss (dated 27 Jan. 1914). Another is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. This third painting was presented by the artist to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1877.

19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.

Alphonse Legros (1837-1911) was born in Dijon where he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts before attending the 'Petite Ecole' of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897) in Paris and then Ecole des Beaux-Arts. he started exhibited at the Salon in 1857. In 1863, Legros visited London where he found admirers and patrons, notably the Ionides family, and was ardently promoted by the brothers Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti. An etcher, a painter and a sculptor, he succeeded Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) at the Slade School in 1876 and was naturalized as a British citizen in 1880.

This work is a fine example of Legros' landscape paintings, which shows the influence of the Realist movement inaugurated in France by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). It was probably depicted in plein-air and represents a view of Hampstead Heath, recognizable thanks to the spire of Hampstead church in the left background.

818-1877