_Jean Baptiste Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805).
To understand the great reputation which Greuze enjoyed in his
day one should remember, besides the prettiness of his pictures
in themselves, the contrast which they afforded in their
subject-matter to the art around them. Look, for instance,
at 1090 and 101-104. Those pictures are nearly contemporary
with Greuze's, and are typical, the first of the mythology,
the latter of the courtliness, and all of the sensuality, of
the current art of the time. The return to nature, the return
to simpler life and sounder morals, which inspired Rousseau,
found expression in Greuze's domestic scenes and sweet girl
faces. "Courage, my good Greuze," said Diderot of one of
Greuze's pictures of domestic drama; "introduce morality into
painting. What, has not the pencil been long enough and too
long consecrated to debauchery and vice? Ought we not to be
delighted at seeing it at last unite with dramatic poetry in
instructing us, correcting us, inviting us to virtue?"[112]
Greuze's art, in comparison with what was around it, was thus
simple, natural, moral. Yet one sees now that something of
the artificiality, against which his pictures were a protest,
nevertheless affected them. For instance there is an obvious
posing in this picture, just as there is a touch of affectation
in 1154. Decidedly, too, Greuze "invests his lessons of
bourgeois morality with sensuous attractions." There is neither
the innocence nor the unconsciousness in the girls of Greuze
that there is in those of Reynolds or Millais.
The life of Greuze is interesting for the curious instance it
affords of the inability, which so many eminent men have shown,
to know in what direction their best powers lay. Greuze's
reputation rested on his _genre_ painting--on his rendering of
domestic scenes or faces; but his ambition was to figure as
an historical painter. His one picture in this style--"Severus
and Caracalla" (in the Louvre)--was painted in 1769 as his
diploma work for the French Academy. They praised him for
"his former productions, which were excellent," and not for
"this one, which was unworthy alike of them and of him," and
admitted him as a painter in the class of _genre_ only. Greuze,
who was vain and overbearing in the days of his vogue, was
greatly incensed and ceased to exhibit at the Academy until
after the Revolution. But his power had then begun to fail;
the classic school reigned supreme; and Greuze, who had been
unhappily married, and whose large earnings were squandered by
extravagance and bad management, died in great poverty. He was
born in Burgundy, of humble middle-class parents, in the little
town of Tournus, where his modest birthplace may still be seen.
His happiest productions were taken from the daily life of the
middle-classes, and his sweet girl faces are unique in French
art (Lady Dilke's article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and
Morley's _Diderot_, vol. ii. chap. iii.).
Campbell's "Lines on a picture of a girl by Greuze" may be quoted of
this picture:--
What wert thou, maid?--thy life--thy name
Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.
Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers--
And hear the songs, in fancy's dream,
Of thy devoted lovers.
How witching must have been thy breath--
How sweet the living charmer--
Whose every semblance after death
Can make the heart grow warmer!