Alphonse Legros

Legros was the leading proponent of the metal point revival in London during the 1880s. His efforts were inspired by early Renaissance drawings by such artists as Leonardo, Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi, whose works he could consult in the Print Room of the British Museum. Legros mainly produced portraits and some copies of old master drawings and classical art. He exhibited his silver- and gold-point drawings to positive reviews and, as Stacey Sell has observed, "His ethereal portraits, on their smooth supports, represented for many people the pinnacle of achievement in metal point and influenced for decades artists' ideas about how the medium should be used."
He rarely dated his drawings and did not record the sitters, who remain largely unknown aside from those that served as the basis for prints. The sitter here seems the same as in the artist's etched portrait of Dr. Louis Vintras from 1904. Vintras was a physician at the French Hospital in London and subsequently Director of the French Convalescent Home at Brighton. Given Legros's French origins, it is not surprising he would have come into contact with Vintras and chosen to portray him.