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Finding this book and this artist was a pleasant happenstance for me when I ran across several plates by Legrand while researching Felicien Rops, of whom Legrand was a student.

I now consider Legrand to be the far better artist between the two. Legrand has a simpler majesty, for sure, and maybe not the creative visionary of Rops, but it may be that Legrand was only rather more interested in the human side of the sexuality he was depicting, while Rops went for lust and desire in their more iconic forms---reaching for shock value rather than a human connection. Austerity rather than warmth.

Legrand was a great illustrator of women, and while he explored many of the same themes as his contemporaries Edgar Degas (ballerinas ) and Jean Louis Forain (the men who, oh, "fancied" ballerinas and prostitutes) I'm seeing more joy and actual humanity in the art than either of the two mentioned artists. While Degas' ballerinas often seem like they're performing even in the art, in a manner that often leaves them coldly impersonal, Legrand's women seem to be alive, lustrous and full of the grandness of desiring to be desired. And unlike Forain's work, the prostitutes are willing participants in the game, as if life (and sex) is all a joke, but a good one.

So, a tip of the hat to Mr. Legrand, whose talent is able to reach out from over a century ago and give me a sense not only of the women as he saw them, but as they saw themselves.