Jean-Baptiste Greuze Painting Reproductions 1 of 5

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, born on 21 August 1725 in the provincial market town of Tournus in Burgundy, emerged in mid-eighteenth-century France as a painter singularly attuned to the evolving moral and sentimental tastes of the Enlightenment era. Although trained in the formal tradition of the Royal Academy, his work persistently defied its hierarchies, focusing not on grand history painting, but rather on the intimate dramas of everyday domestic life. The trajectory of his career reveals an artist whose ambitions often exceeded institutional approval, yet whose popularity with the public proved enduring and, at times, astonishing.

Greuze’s early education in painting was unconventional and largely autodidactic. It was the Lyonnese artist Charles Grandon, known for his own success as a portraitist, who recognized and fostered the young boy’s aptitude. Grandon persuaded the artist’s initially reluctant father not only to allow his son to study painting, but to let him accompany him first to Lyon and then to Paris. It was in the capital, amidst the rigorous academic training of the Royal Academy, that Greuze confronted the first paradox of his career: he was present, industrious, and eager, yet largely unnoticed.

His breakthrough came with "Le Père de famille expliquant la Bible à ses enfants", a picture whose authorship was initially met with skepticism by the Academy. Nevertheless, this painting - and those that followed in a similar vein - captured the attention of key cultural figures, most notably the influential patron La Live de Jully. By the time he exhibited "L’Aveugle trompé" in 1755, his place within the Parisian art world seemed secured. The sculptor Pigalle presented the canvas on his behalf to the Academy, which accepted Greuze as an agréé, a significant if not yet full status within its structure.

His 1755 departure for Italy, undertaken with the Abbé Louis Gougenot, was meant to address critiques of his limited engagement with classical models. But rather than elevating his style, this journey proved artistically unproductive. Gougenot’s interests in allegory and mythological subject matter may have influenced the works Greuze exhibited at the 1757 Salon, yet these pieces revealed a painter straining to adopt an idiom that did not suit him. He quickly abandoned such efforts and returned to the scenes of bourgeois pathos that had first brought him acclaim.

The years following his return saw Greuze at the height of his fame. The Salons of 1759, 1761, and 1763 confirmed his popularity, but it was in 1765 that he reached the apogee of his critical and public success. That year, he exhibited thirteen works, including "La Jeune Fille qui pleure son oiseau mort", "La Bonne Mère", "Le Mauvais fils puni", and "La Malédiction paternelle" - the latter two now held by the Louvre. These tableaux, rich with moralizing content and emotional nuance, offered a pictorial counterpart to the bourgeois drama espoused by writers like Diderot. They projected a vision of virtue and repentance, often centred on women and children, rendered with soft illumination and a polished technique that highlighted the clarity of gesture and expression.

It was also in 1765 that tensions between Greuze and the Academy began to surface. Pressured to submit a reception piece, he resolved to stake his claim not as a genre painter, but as a history painter - the most esteemed category within the academic hierarchy. The result was "Sévère et Caracalla", an ambitious but ill-conceived canvas that failed to persuade his peers. In contrast, his portrait of Jeaurat and the charming "Petite Fille au chien noir" reaffirmed his gifts in his accustomed idiom. The Academy, formally admitting him, nevertheless refused to recognize him as anything more than a genre painter. Incensed, Greuze withdrew from its exhibitions and remained absent for decades.

His withdrawal marked the beginning of a gradual decline. Though he continued to produce and remained popular among collectors and the public, his career no longer evolved. The French Revolution’s dismantling of academic privilege permitted him to return in 1804, when he exhibited "Ariadne", but his artistic powers had diminished. Greuze died the following year, on 4 March 1805, in the Louvre, where he had once lived with relative comfort, now impoverished and nearly forgotten. Financial mismanagement, extravagant habits, and his wife’s embezzlement all contributed to his destitution.

Yet even in death, he inspired loyalty. At his funeral, a veiled young woman - later identified as Mlle Mayer, a future companion of the painter Prud’hon - laid immortelles upon his coffin. The gesture, inscribed with a note calling the flowers emblems of his glory, suggested that his influence remained tangible among the next generation.

Greuze’s legacy is paradoxical. Technically, his painting was consistent with the practice of his time: refined brushwork, balanced composition, and idealized physiognomies. What distinguished his work was its content. In an age increasingly attuned to the philosophies of Rousseau and the moralizing thrust of Enlightenment literature, Greuze painted scenes of domestic virtue, familial failure, and emotional consequence. These paintings, affected by a melodramatic strain, still managed to convey an intimacy that the public found moving and credible.

Critics noted the contradiction: that in attacking the artificialities of social life, Greuze’s pictures introduced their own artifice. Diderot’s own theatrical ventures on similar themes never quite succeeded, but he recognized in Greuze’s canvases the embodiment of his aspirations. The emotionalism that defined Greuze’s work, particularly the idealized sorrow and innocence of young women, produced images of enduring popularity, appealing both to moral sensibilities and aesthetic pleasure.

The success of "La Jeune Fille à l’agneau", which sold for an extraordinary sum at the Pourtalès sale in 1865, underscores the lasting appeal of Greuze’s vision. His influence extended beyond painting: four of the leading engravers of the time - Massard père, Flipart, Gaillard, and Levasseur - were chosen to reproduce his work, a testament to its desirability. His pupil Madame Le Doux, his daughter, and his granddaughter Madame de Valory continued his style and promoted his legacy. The latter even published a vaudeville play in his honour, complete with a biographical notice.

Greuze’s presence echoed into literature and popular culture. From Sherlock Holmes’s investigations to Lampedusa’s reflections on death and sensuality, from Forster’s aestheticism to Noël Coward’s camp satire, his art has remained a point of reference - admired, questioned, and reinterpreted. However one evaluates the sentimentalism of his vision, Greuze's images form an indispensable chapter in the visual language of Enlightenment morality.