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Greuze, Jean-Baptiste |
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Greuze, Jean-Baptiste (1725-1805). French painter. He had a great
success at the 1755 Salon with his Father Reading the Bible to His Children
(Louvre, Paris) and went on to win enormous popularity with similar sentimental
and melodramatic genre scenes. His work was praised by Diderot as `morality
in paint', and as representing the highest ideal of painting in his day.
He also wished to succeed as a history painter, but his Septimius Severus
Reproaching Caracalla (Louvre, 1769) was rejected by the Salon, causing
him acute embarrassment. Much of Greuze's later work consisted of titillating
pictures of young girls, which contain thinly veiled sexual allusions under
their surface appearance of mawkish innocence; The Broken Pitcher
(Louvre), for example, alludes to loss of virginity.
With the swing of taste towards Neoclassicism his work went out of fashion and he sank into obscurity at the Revolution in 1789. At the very end of his career he received a commission to paint a portrait of Napoleon (Versailles, 1804-05), but he died in poverty. His huge output is particularly well represented in the Louvre, the Wallace Collection in London, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, and in the museum dedicated to him in Tournus, his native town. |
 49.3K, 774 x 600 |
The Village Betrothal Painted: 1761 |
The Paralytic (The Fruits of a Good Education) Painted: 1763 Oil on canvas The Hermitage St. Petersburg |
 63.6K, 590 x 642 |
 31.4K, 485 x 600 |
Portrait of Count Stroganov as a Child Painted: 1778 Oil on canvas The Hermitage St. Petersburg |
The Wicked Son Punished Painted: 1778 Louvre |
 47.2K, 638 x 500 |