The Abbey Farm (La Ferme de l'abbaye)

A prolific etcher, Legros played an active role in the French etching revival of the 1860s. Humble, rural landscapes peopled by farmhands and peasants were the subjects of many of his works. After forging a friendship with James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Legros left Paris and moved to London, where he became naturalized in 1880. In Legros’s work, French and English sensibilities merged. In The Abbey Farm, the softness of the rain and the stillness of the abbey farm are accentuated by the delicacy of Legros’s etched lines.