Jean-Baptiste Greuze

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(b Tournus, 21 Aug 1725; d Paris, 21 March 1805). French painter and draughtsman. He was named an associate member of the Acad?mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, in 1755 on the strength of a group of paintings that included genre scenes, portraits and studies of expressive heads (t?tes d'expression). These remained the essential subjects of his art for the next 50 years, except for a brief, concentrated and unsuccessful experiment with history painting in the late 1760s, which was to affect his later genre painting deeply. Though his art has often been compared with that of Jean-Sim?on Chardin in particular and interpreted within the context of NEO-CLASSICISM in general, it stands so strikingly apart from the currents of its time that Greuze's accomplishments are best described, as they often were by the artist's contemporaries, as unique. He was greatly admired by connoisseurs, critics and the general public throughout most of his life. His pictures were in the collections of such noted connoisseurs as Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully, Claude-Henri Watelet and Etienne-Fran?ois, Duc de Choiseul. For a long period he was in particular favour with the critic Denis Diderot, who wrote about him in the Salon reviews that he published in Melchior Grimm's privately circulated Correspondance litt?raire. His reputation declined towards the end of his life and through the early part of the 19th century, to be revived after 1850, when 18th-century painting returned to favour, by such critics as Th?ophile Thor?, Ars?ne Houssaye and, most notably, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt in their book L'Art du dix-huiti?me si?cle. By the end of the century Greuze's work, especially his many variations on the Head of a Girl, fetched record prices, and his Broken Pitcher (Paris, Louvre) was one of the most popular paintings in the Louvre. The advent of modernism in the early decades of the 20th century totally obliterated Greuze's reputation. It was only in the 1970s, with Brookner's monograph, Munhall's first comprehensive exhibition of the artist's work, increased sale prices, important museum acquisitions and fresh analyses of his art by young historians, that Greuze began to regain the important place that he merits in the history of French art of the 18th century.

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The French painter Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was most famous for his sentimental genre scenes of peasant life.

Jean Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournus on Aug. 21, 1725. His early life is obscure, but he studied painting in Lyons and appeared in Paris about 1750. He entered the Royal Academy as a student and worked with Charles Joseph Natoire, a prominent decorative painter. During the 1760s Greuze achieved a significant reputation with his sentimental paintings of peasants or lower-class people seen in humble surroundings and in the midst of theatrically emotional family situations; examples are The Village Bride (1761), The Father's Curse (1765), and The Prodigal Son (1765).

In 1769 Greuze was admitted to the academy as a genre painter. Ambitious to become a member of the academy as a history painter, which was a higher rank, he was so angered by his admission as only a genre painter that he refused to show his paintings at the academy's exhibitions (the Salons). But by that time he was already famous and could afford to ignore the Salons.

French painting during the 18th century was dominated by the rococo style. Rococo painting was aristocratic in nature, elegant, and sensuous; stylistically it depended upon soft colors, complex surfaces, refined textures, free brushwork, and asymmetrical compositions based upon the interplay of curved lines and masses. Produced for highly sophisticated patrons, rococo painting concentrated on aristocratic diversions, decorative portraits, mythological and allegorical themes frequently treated in a playful or erotic manner, and idyllic pastoral scenes.

Greuze's pretentiously moralizing rustic dramas constituted a reaction against rococo frivolity in art; by appealing to emotion they were also a revolt against the emphasis placed upon reason and science by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that pervaded the first half of the 18th century. A strong undercurrent of emotionalism appeared early in the artistic and intellectual history of the century, but it manifested itself with genuine vigor only after about 1760. In this context, Greuze's work is but one facet of a general cultural phenomenon that emphasized "sentiment" and appeared in novels, plays, poetry, and the protoromantic philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

The rising importance of the middle class, and of middle-class morality, also played a part in the success of Greuze's cottage genre. His work seemed to preach the homely virtues of the simple life, a "return to nature," and the honesty of unaffected emotion. The blatant melodrama of his preaching was not found offensive, and visitors to the Salons wept in front of his paintings. The intellectuals of the day were generally opposed to the rococo as a decadent style; rather paradoxically, Greuze's most influential champion was Denis Diderot, one of the leading philosophers of the Enlightenment, who hailed Greuze as "the painter of virtue, the rescuer of corrupted morality." The fashion for simplicity and the "natural man" penetrated the highest circles, and engravings of Greuze's work were popular with all classes of society.

In terms of style, Greuze has been linked to neoclassicism. The complexity of his compositions, however, and his interest in surface textures place him within the general stylistic pattern of his period. In his sensual paintings of girls (such as The Morning Prayer and The Milkmaid), with their veiled eroticism, pale colors, and soft tonality, his connection with the rococo is most evident. Some of Greuze's best work is to be seen in his portraits (for example, Étienne Jeaurat), which are often sensitive and direct.

Greuze survived the French Revolution but his fame did not. He died in Paris on March 21, 1805, in poverty and obscurity.

Further Reading

The most important work on Greuze is in French. References to Greuze in English are in François Fosca, The Eighteenth Century: Watteau to Tiepolo (trans. 1952), and Arno Schönberger and Halldor Söehner, The Rococo Age (1960), a handsomely illustrated work dealing with many facets of 18th-century culture. For an extremely interesting view of Greuze within the context of 18th-century painting in general see Michael Levy, Rococo to Revolution (1966).

Greuze, Jean-Baptiste (1725-1805). French painter. Greuze developed Charles Lebrun's theories of distinguishable human expressions in immensely popular paintings composed like theatrical tableaux. Instead of Greek heroes he portrayed ordinary families fulfilling simple duties of moral or social significance such as Le Père de famille expliquant la Bible (1755). Diderot perceived a link with Rousseau and devoted much favourable comment to Greuze in his Salons. He approved of the realism of portraits like Babuti, the sensibilité in his La Jeune Fille qui pleure son oiseau mort (1765), and the human emotions in his monumental set pieces of La Malédiction paternelle (1777) and Le Mauvais Fils puni (1778).

[Patsy Campbell]

Greuze, Jean-Baptiste (1725–1805), French painter. Born in Tournus (Burgundy) to a prosperous middle-class family, Greuze studied art in Lyon in the late 1740s with the portrait painter Charles Grandon. In about 1750, he sat in on drawing classes at the Académie Royal in Paris, and in 1755 became an associate member of the academy as a genre painter after presenting A Father Reading the Bible to His Family, The Blindman Deceived, and The Sleeping Schoolboy. These moralizing narratives that deal with social and familial issues of contemporary life among the lower and middle classes (reminiscent in certain ways of William Hogarth) announced principal themes the artist would become most celebrated for throughout his career.

Aristocratic patrons in ancien régime France took great interest in genre subjects and encouraged French painters to revive this tradition. Thus, Greuze found ready patronage for his paintings. Like many fellow genre painters, Greuze was influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch predecessors whose genre images were accessible through prints as well as original works in private collections. He also studied Rubens and Rembrandt, both of whom had an indelible impact on his style. In addition, Greuze was influenced by the style of the esteemed rococo court painter François Boucher (1703–1770) and the celebrated genre painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), who was a peer as well as a rival.

Greuze traveled in Italy in 1755–1757 as a guest of Louis Gougenot, Abbé de Chezal-Benoît. He stayed at the French Academy in Rome in 1756–1757 thanks to the intercession of the Marquis de Marigny, superintendent of buildings for Louis XV. While in Rome Greuze seemed impervious to an emerging neoclassicism and continued to work on moralizing subjects in a style he had developed in France. Upon returning to France in 1757 he exhibited at the salon "Four Pictures in Italian Costume": Indolence, Broken Eggs, The Neapolitan Gesture, and The Fowler. All present moralizing narratives and commentary on contemporary mores with didactic implications. Indolence, for example, is an emblem or allegory of sloth; it inaugurated a series of admonitory works in which Greuze represented sensual young women as single figures with emblematic objects or surroundings such as in The Broken Mirror (1763), somewhat unusual in its depiction of a wealthier interior. Often the compositions communicate the erotic accessibility of servants, as in The Laundress (1761), or the loss of virginity in young adolescent girls, as in the variations on the theme of a young girl mourning her dead bird (1759, 1765) or The Broken Pitcher (1773). These paintings, often moralizing in theme, nonetheless emphasize an eroticism and sensuality that belong to the French rococo tradition. Greuze also specialized in depicting the beauty of children, as in Girl Playing with a Dog (1767), Young Shepherd Boy with a Basket of Flowers and its pendant, Simplicity (1761), Boy with Lessonbook (1757), and commissioned children's portraits such as the Comtesse Mollien with Puppies at Age Six (1791).

Broken Eggs, another in the 1757 series of "Italian Costume" paintings, signaled an important direction in Greuze's art, that of the moralizing narrative in which a larger social group of the rustic lower classes is involved. Greuze also depicted more complex narratives involving familial and social situations. One of his best-known works, The Marriage Contract (1761), depicts a bride reluctant to leave her family as her father hands over her dowry to her betrothed and a notary records the transaction. This painting was hailed by the great Enlightenment philosophe and art critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784), who often praised the artist. He saw this and similar paintings by Greuze as visual correspondents to his psychological family dramas known as the drame bourgeois.

Although Greuze sometimes represented familial devotion, as in The Paralytic Father (1763) and The Well-Loved Mother (1765), his most dramatic compositions depict unhappy families, as in his well-known pendants, The Father's Curse and The Punished Son (1778). In these works, gesture and body language communicate the tragic familial narrative. In the first painting, the aging father of a large family curses his son, who abandons the family to join the army in spite of the pleas of his mother and siblings. In the pendant, the wounded son returns to his father's deathbed. He is a broken man, his father has just died, and his grief-stricken family is impoverished.

Greuze was also well known for intimate scenes of young mothers of the lower class with their children, as in Silence! (1759), in which a beautiful young mother with bared breast (she is ostensibly breastfeeding her infant), admonishes her son to stop blowing his horn, which will awaken the sleeping siblings. Here, simplicity, poverty, and familial intimacy are combined with erotic elements that emphasize sensuality and fertility.

Although Greuze enjoyed great success as a genre painter, he aspired to history painting, the top of the hierarchy of genres in French academic art. In 1769 he submitted a historical subject as his reception piece for full admittance to the academy, Septimius Severus Reproaching His Son Caracalla for Having Wanted to Assassinate Him, a composition influenced by Poussin and painted in the neoclassical style. The academy ridiculed the painting and rejected Greuze as a history painter, admitting him instead only in the category of genre painting. Greuze was so embittered by this decision that he did not exhibit at the salon again until 1800. Late in his career he returned to history painting with such works as Psyche Crowning Cupid (1792) and his last major painting, the strange and enigmatic religious composition, St. Mary of Egpyt (1801).

Greuze also established a solid reputation as a portrait painter. One of his most insightful studies of character is the subtle portrait of the academy model Joseph (1755). Other expressive and lively portraits include those of his patron, Ange-Laurent La Live de Jully (1759), The Marquise de Bezons Tuning Her Guitar (1759), and Benjamin Franklin (c. 1777).

Greuze's impact on the development of French painting in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries helped ensure the continued popularity and importance of genre painting as a means of conveying moral, psychological, and social narratives of everyday life, influencing such painters as Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845). His immediate students and followers, Wille the Younger and Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié (1735–1784), enjoyed success, and Greuze also encouraged his female students, who included Constance Mayer and his daughter Anna Greuze.

Bibliography

Bailey, Colin. Jean-Baptiste Greuze: The Laundress. Los Angeles, 2000.

Brookner, Anita. Greuze: The Rise and Fall of an Eighteenth-Century Phenomenon. Greenwich, Conn., 1972.

Ledbury, Mark. Sedaine, Greuze and the Boundaries of Genre. Oxford, 2000.

Munhall, Edgar. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1725–1805. Hartford, Conn., 1976.

Sahut, Marie Catherine, and Nathalie Volle, eds. Diderot et l'art de Boucher à David. Paris, 1984.

—DOROTHY JOHNSON

"Greuze" redirects here. For the French actress, see Lillian Greuze.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (21 August 1725 – 4 March 1805) was a French painter.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Relations with the Academy 1.3 Legacy 2 References in literature 3 See also 4 References

Biography

Early life

He was born at Tournus, Saône-et-Loire. He is generally said to have formed his own talent; this is, however, true only in the most limited sense, for at an early age his inclinations, though thwarted by his father, were encouraged by a Lyonnese artist named Grandon, or Grondom, who enjoyed during his lifetime considerable reputation as a portrait-painter. Grandon not only persuaded the father of Greuze to give way to his sons wishes, and permit the lad to accompany him as his pupil to Lyon, but, when at a later date he-himself left Lyon for Paris — where his son-in-law Grétry the celebrated composer enjoyed the height of favour — Grandon carried young Greuze with him.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Self Portrait. Louvre

Settled in Paris, Greuze worked from the living model in the school of the Royal Academy (Paris), but did not attract the attention of his teachers; and when he produced his first picture, "Le Père de famille expliquant la Bible a ses enfants," considerable doubt was felt and shown as to his share in its production. By other and more remarkable works of the same class Greuze soon established his claims beyond contest, and won for himself the notice and support of the well-known connoisseur La Live de Jully, the brother-in-law of Madame d'Epinay. In 1755 Greuze exhibited his "Aveugle trompé," upon which, presented by Pigalle the sculptor, he was immediately agréé by the Academy.

Towards the close of the same year he left France for Italy, in company with the Abbé Louis Gougenot, who had deserted from the magistrature — although he had obtained the post of conseiller au Châtelet in order to take the petit collet. Gougenot had some acquaintance with the arts, and was highly valued by the Academicians, who, during his journey with Greuze, elected him an honorary member of their body on account of his studies in mythology and allegory; his acquirements in these respects are said to have been largely utilized by them, but to Greuze they were of doubtful advantage, and he lost rather than gained by this visit to Italy in Gougenot's company. He had undertaken it probably in order to silence those who taxed him with ignorance of great models of style, but the Italian subjects which formed the entirety of his contributions to the Salon of 1757 showed that he had been put on a false track, and he speedily returned to the source of his first inspiration.

Relations with the Academy

L'accordée de village (The Village Bride). Louvre

In 1759, 1761 ("L'accordée de village", Louvre), and 1763 Greuze exhibited with ever-increasing success; in 1765 he reached the zenith of his powers and reputation. In that year he was represented with no less than thirteen works, amongst which may be cited "La Jeune Fille qui pleure son oiseau mort", "La Bonne Mère", "Le Mauvais fils puni" (Louvre) and "La Malediction paternelle" (Louvre). The Academy took occasion to press Greuze for his diploma picture, the execution of which had been long delayed, and forbade him to exhibit on their walls until he had complied with their regulations. "J'ai vu la lettre," says Diderot, "qui est un modèle d'honnêteté et d'estime; j'ai vu la réponse de Greuze, qui est un modèle de vanité et d'impertinence: il fallait appuyer cela d'un chef-d'œuvre, et c'est ce que Greuze n'a pas fait." (I have read the letter, which is a model of honesty and reverence; I have seen Greuze's response, which is a model of vanity and impertinence: he should have backed it up with a masterpiece, and that's precisely what he didn't do.)

Septime Sévère et Caracalla. Louvre

Greuze wished to be received as a historical painter, and produced a work which he intended to vindicate his right to despise his qualifications as a peintre de genre. This unfortunate canvas "Sévère et Caracalla" (Louvre) was exhibited in 1769 side by side with Greuze's portrait of "Jeaurat" (Louvre) and his admirable "Petite Fille au chien noir". The Academicians received their new member with all due honours, but at the close of the ceremonies the Director addressed Greuze in these words "Monsieur, l'Académie vous a reçu, mais c'est comme peintre de genre; elle a eu égard à vos anciennes productions, qui sont excellentes, et elle a fermé les yeux sur celle-ci, qui n'est digne ni d'elle ni de vous." (Sir, the Academy has accepted you, but only as peintre de genre; the Academy has respect for your former productions, which are excellent, but she has shut her eyes to this one, which is unworthy, both of her and of you yourself.) Greuze, greatly incensed, quarrelled with his confreres, and ceased to exhibit until, in 1804, the Revolution had thrown open the doors of the Academy to all the world.

Benjamin Franklin by Jean Baptiste Greuze

In the following year, on 4 March 1805, he died in the Louvre in great poverty. He had been in receipt of considerable wealth, which he had dissipated by extravagance and bad management (as well as embezzlement by his wife), so that during his closing years he was forced even to solicit commissions which his enfeebled powers no longer enabled him to carry out with success. The brilliant reputation which Greuze acquired seems to have been due, not to his accomplishments as a painter for his practice, but is evidently that current in his own debut to the character of the subjects which he treated. That return to nature which inspired Rousseau's attacks upon an artificial civilization demanded expression in art.

Legacy

W.A. Mozart, 1763-64. Yale University.

The White Hat, 1780

Diderot, in Le Fils naturel and Père de famille, tried to turn the vein of domestic drama to account on the stage; that which he tried and failed to do, Greuze, in painting, achieved with extraordinary success, although his works, like the plays of Diderot, were affected by that very artificiality against which they protested. The touch of melodramatic exaggeration, however, which runs through them finds an apology in the firm and brilliant play of line, in the freshness and vigour of the flesh tints, in the enticing softness of expression, by the alluring air of health and youth, by the sensuous attractions, in short, with which Greuze invests his lessons of bourgeois morality. As Diderot said of "La Bonne mère," il a prêché à la population; and a certain piquancy of contrast is the result which never fails to obtain admirers.

Grave of Greuze

"La Jeune Fille à l'agneau" fetched, indeed, at the Pourtal's sale in 1865, no less than 1,000,000 francs. One of Greuze's pupils, Madame Le Doux, imitated with success the manner of her master; his daughter and granddaughter, Madame de Valory, also inherited some traditions of his talent. Madame de Valory published in 1813 a comédie-vaudeville, Greuze, ou l'accorde de village, to which she prefixed a notice of her grandfather's life and works, and the Salons of Diderot also contain, besides many other particulars, the story at full length of Greuze's quarrel with the Academy. Four of the most distinguished engravers of that date, Massard père, Flipart, Gaillard and Levasseur, were specially entrusted by Greuze with the reproduction of his subjects, but there are also excellent prints by other engravers, notably by Cars and Le Bas.

References in literature

In the second chapter of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear, Holmes' discussion of his enemy Professor Moriarty involves a Greuze painting, intended to illustrate Moriarty's wealth despite his small income.

In the sixth part of The Leopard, a novel by the Italian writer Tomasi di Lampedusa, the Prince of Salina watches a Greuze painting, La Mort du Juste, and he starts thinking about death when his nephew Tancredi comes and asks "Are you courting death ?"

In Agatha Christie's "The Murder at the Vicarage," Miss Marple mentions her nephew considers another character "the perfect Greuze."

See also

• Les Neuf Sœurs

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jean-Baptiste Greuze

• Normand, J. B. Greuze (1892).

Emma Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). ISBN 0-521-55508-6.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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