Alphonse Legros

Legros was born in Dijon, trained in Paris with Lecoq de Boisbaudran (the teacher of memory drawing whose method Corot admired), moved to London in 1863 and became Slade Professor at University College, where he taught a generation to draw from memory and to etch. He revived metalpoint, drawing on prepared paper with a silver or gold stylus that cannot be erased and barely varies in weight, and his landscapes in that medium are the purest line drawings of the nineteenth century.

He belongs here for two reasons. The silverpoint landscapes show what a hard, pale, unerasable line forces you to do: decide before you touch the paper. And his etched farms, rivers and willows are Corot's France drawn by a man trained in the same memory method, with the same economy.