La Mort du Vagabond

Catalogue number: SO 0028
Artist: Alphonse Legros
Printer: Frederick Goulding
Date: 1875
Medium: Etching and drypoint
Catalogues: Malassis & Thibaudeau 89, Bliss 89
State: VIII/VIII

Subject

On a rain-lashed and shelterless heathland, a figure lies lifeless on the side of a rutted track. Fine (drypoint?) lines suggest a passing squall, perhaps implying that an apparently minor event has finally overcome the resilience of the oppressed man. The rawness of subject and atmosphere are emphasized by the startlingly abrupt composition in which a stunted pine tree makes an emphatic and discomforting diagonal from the top left of the plate.

“La Mort du Vagabond is not a whit less suggestive in its contrast between the feebleness of the worn-out beggar now stretched out lonely on the pathside—his head raised, gasping, and his hat knocked away—and the force and fury of the storm that beats over the dead tree and desolate common. The unity of tragic impression in homely life, preserved in this plate, will give it a permanent value among the great things of Art.”

Frederick Wedmore, Four Masters of Etching, London, Fine Art Society, 1883

Printing

The plate underwent significant modification before the published state was achieved. Bliss (1923) illustrates four earlier states of the plate showing its dramatic metamorphosis from a scene depicting two woodcutters pulling down the dead pine tree to the image depicted here.

History

Collectors stamp for ‘Max Biach, Wein’ on the reverse. The Jewish Czech-Austrian textile manufacturer Max Biach (1850-1912) was a major patron of the Wiener Werkstätte and a significant collector of prints. His collection was dispersed by auction after his death although some works remained in the possession of his family and were subsequently appropriated by the Nazi state bureaucracy after the Anschluss with Germany in 1938.

Original receipt from Arthur Greatorex Ltd., 14 Grafton St, London W1, dated 7th October 1935: Print sold for £21.0.0. to R J Thwaite Esq of Woodthorpe Road S. M. School, Ashford, Middlesex.

Purchased online at auction from DRD Auction Rooms Ltd, Isle of Wight, on 21 May 2024. Conserved by Raymond McChrystal in 2024