Alphonse Legros, originally from Dijon, moved to Paris in the early 1850s to pursue his artistic ambitions. After debuting at the Salon in 1859, he gained recognition via his participation in the Salon des Refusés and his exposure to Courbet’s realism. In 1863, he moved to London at the invitation of James McNeill Whistler and became a respected professor at the Slade School of Art. 

Although he began sculpting later in life, his early works display remarkable skill. One of his most classical pieces, our Torso, sculpted in 1890, demonstrates his mastery. Initially modelled with limbs, Legros chose to truncate them in a homage to the ancient sculptures studied at the Louvre and at the British Museum. If the act of severing the arms evokes the aesthetics of the Venus de’ Medici, the woman’s posture is reminiscent of the Aphrodite of Cnidus (fig. 1). By removing the limbs, Legros focused on the abstract beauty of the torso, a concept also explored by Auguste Rodin in the 1880s and 1890s.​​