Louis Legrand

1863 – 1951

Louis Auguste Mathieu Legrand was born in Dijon in 1863. He studied at the l’École de Beaux-Arts de Dijon.

He moved to Paris in 1884 at the age of twenty, where he began to study with Felicien Rops. He participated in the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts through he 1920’s, and won a silver medal at the l’Exposition Universelle of 1900.

Legrand exhibited one hundred etchings at the Galerie l’Art Nouveau in 1896. He did many images of the Moulin Rouge.

Legrand was known primarily as a graphic artist, he produced many beautiful colored etchings, and illustrated several books, but he was also a very talented painter. His paintings were done with a heavy impasto; they frequently featured the Parisian social life, particularly the nightlife. Many of his paintings of prostitutes, dancers, and bar scenes feature an almost palpable eroticism and sense of decadence.