[See front-page illustration.]
This charming head is from a beautiful oil-painting by the great French
painter Greuze, who a century ago was famous for depicting little folks
with his brush and pencil.
Jean Baptiste Greuze was born in 1725 at Tournus, a little manufacturing
town in the Department of SaƓne-et-Loire, in the south of France. From
his early boyhood he developed the inclination and taste for art which
later made him one of the first of French painters. His first studies
were made in Lyons, a great manufacturing centre, not very far from his
native town. From Lyons he went to Paris, and was so successful that he
was enabled to fulfill his ambition of visiting Rome, where he pursued
his studies for a considerable period.
Greuze had the deepest love and affection for children, and was never so
happy as when painting them. For this reason we find that his pictures
are not stiff little photographs of sedate and unnaturally wise young
people, but that they have the frank unconsciousness and joyous serenity
of youth. They are real children, and truth is as essential to greatness
in the world of art as it is to greatness in the human character.
In his mode of life Greuze was eccentric and unhappy. He had the great
fault of thriftlessness, and carelessness of his personal affairs, and
when he died in 1805, in his eightieth year, he was reduced to a
condition of miserable poverty. It is sad to contemplate so wretched an
end to the life of one whose artistic creations will be admired and
respected as long as art endures.