Head of a Man (1886): Art, History and Details

Head of a Man (1886) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Alphonse Legros (French, 1837–1911).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This drawing, which appears to be a portrait at first glance, is difficult to categorize. Alphonse Legros created many such images while teaching in London, at the school of South Kensington and then at the Slade School, where he advised his students to directly copy the Old Masters. Legros combined depiction of live models with references to art of the past, as seen here. He used the thin lines of metalpoint for expressive means on this sheet.

Object facts

• Title: Head of a Man
• Date: 1886
• Creator attribution: Alphonse Legros (French, 1837–1911)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: metalpoint
• Dimensions: Sheet: 31.5 x 23 cm (12 3/8 x 9 1/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.392

A detail from the museum

The artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler encouraged Alphonse Legros to visit London in 1863, and he spent the rest of his life there.

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Selections from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. T. Edward Hanley. Exh. Cat. New York: Gallery of Modern Art, 1967.
• Visages du dix-neuvième siècle. Exh. Cat. Paris: Galerie Jacques Fischer-Chantal Kiener, 1977.
• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.