[Frontispiece: INNOCENCE.]
Bell's Miniature Series of Painters
GREUZE
BY
HAROLD ARMITAGE
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1902
{v}
PREFACE
Although Paris, during the eighteenth century, became the home of
artists of more subtle genius than Greuze, yet the pictures of no
other painter of that alluring period have become so familiar to the
people of our own country. Engravings, etchings, photographs, and
reproductions in colour of the works of Greuze abound on every hand;
but many have admired the art who have not known so much as the name
of the artist, and more have known his name, and have still been far
from any knowledge of the story of his life.
Indeed, though brief narrations of what Greuze did and suffered in
this world have appeared in volumes that have contained also the
biographies of other artists, no book, in this country, has been
devoted solely to an account of his romantic career. Moreover, the
addition of twenty-one of the works of Greuze to the possessions of
the British nation by the bequest of the Wallace Collection, and the
exhibition of nine more at the Art Gallery of the Corporation of
London in 1902, must have awakened curiosity concerning a painter
whose peculiar place in the evolution of art in France, {vi} whose
character, and whose eventful life, make his history interesting
alike to those who delight in pictures and to those who read
biography for its own sake.
The author hopes that this volume will make more available than it
has hitherto been an account of the principal happenings in the story
of an artist with whose charming pictures the world has been for many
years so intimately acquainted.
{vii}
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Early Years
Fame in Paris
Poverty and Death
Romance and Tragedy
Personal Characteristics
Characteristics of his Work
Position in French Art
Our Illustrations
The Chief Works of Greuze
{viii}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Innocence ... Frontispiece
The Village Bride (L'Accordée de Village)
The Pretty Laundress (La Belle Blanchisseuse)
The Listening Girl
The Kiss (Le Baiser Jeté)
Portrait of Robespierre
The Broken Pitcher (La Cruche Cassée)
The Milkmaid (La Laitière)
{1}
LIFE OF GREUZE
EARLY YEARS
The way of life in which Jean Baptiste Greuze spent his childhood and
his youth was not different from that of most other artists. His
parents were obscure people, who had no riches; and his father
opposed his desire to be a painter.
For many years, even his own countrymen who wrote of Greuze, gave the
date of his birth any time between 1725 and 1732; but it is known now
that the accurate date is August 21, 1725, the one which has since
been inscribed on the modest house in Tournus, near Mâcon, where his
father and mother were living when the artist was born.
By the time that Greuze was eight years of age he had manifested a
strong inclination towards the use of the pencil. Drawing became his
chief amusement; and he employed, indifferently, stray pieces of
paper, or whitewashed walls, for the display of his draughtsmanship.
His father, as the way of fathers is, had planned for his son a
position more exalted than his own in an occupation with which he
himself was connected. The elder Greuze was {2} a kind of provincial
builder, contractor, and slater; and he wished the younger Greuze to
become an architect.
Although it is not apparent why an architect, who to-day undergoes
severe discipline in drawing, should be the worse because he had a
propensity for sketching, it has yet been stated by some of the
biographers of Greuze that the father used persuasions and threats to
prevent the son from making drawings, and that the boy was thereby
driven to the device of exercising his skill surreptitiously in his
bedroom.
But a day came when the father saw the folly of his continued
resistance. Mistaking for an engraving a head of St. James which
his son had copied with a pen, that he might give it to his father as
a birthday present, the elder Greuze was so much impressed by the
skill of the lad that he thought it better after all to allow him to
have his own way in the choice of a profession; and Greuze therefore
became the pupil of Grandon, of Lyons, a portrait painter.
In Grandon's constitution the artist was subservient to the man of
affairs; and De Goncourt has written that his studio was a veritable
picture factory. Greuze, however, had more elevated notions of the
vocation of an artist than to remain content in marking time for the
rest of his life as a sort of inglorious piece-worker, and his
ambition and self-confidence urged him to Paris, where he believed
his powers would win for him both fame and fortune.
{3}
In Paris Greuze worked unobtrusively, often in solitude, and earned a
precarious livelihood, possibly not without invoking the aid of some
of the methods of the master whom he had left in Lyons. He was not
immediately successful, and his chance of triumphing over the
obstacles which beset a raw youth from the provinces, seeking fame in
Paris, seemed to be but a remote one. Yet Pigalle, the king's
sculptor, believing that Greuze had the qualities which win success
ultimately, encouraged the painter to persevere.
Greuze had, or fancied he had, to contend against the hostility and
the jealousy of the other artists. At the Academy, where he went to
draw, he received less consideration than his ability merited, and he
complained eventually to the artist Silvestre, to whom also he showed
some specimens of his work. Silvestre, admiring his skill, wished to
have his portrait painted by Greuze, and as Silvestre was a man of
some influence, this commission was the means of making Greuze's name
more widely known. About this time, too, Greuze attracted attention
by one of his representations of scenes from the life of humbler folk
than were usually seen in pictures during that period. This painting
was _L'Aveugle Trompé_, and Greuze was made _agréé_ of the Academy on
June 28, 1755, either by the good offices of Silvestre or of Pigalle,
and thus acquired the right to exhibit his pictures at the annual
exhibitions.
{4}
FAME IN PARIS
Popular as was this picture of _L'Aveugle Trompé_, its success was
eclipsed by the fame of _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses
Enfants_, a work which advanced Greuze to the front rank of the
leading painters of that time. Even when one remembers that this is
a better picture than many which he painted afterwards, it is yet not
easy to-day to understand the enthusiasm that it caused when it was
first exhibited. One reason for our difficulty is that we do not
feel the force of its novelty as the people of Paris felt it when
they had become satiated with the painted pastorals, allegories, and
coquetries of that voluptuous era.
The picture, pleasing as a whole, contains indications of the
tendency towards artificiality which afterwards became so marked in
many of Greuze's melodramatic paintings. But for the rest the scene
is nature in a mirror compared with other canvases of the same
century. The painter has represented the interior of a farm kitchen,
and a devout and venerable farmer reads, from a large Bible, some
chapters of the New Testament to the other members of the household.
All these, from the grandmother to the child of three years, are
picturesque and pleasing, and they are happily placed in the picture.
This work was bought by Monsieur de la Live de Jully, a rich
connoisseur, who invited artists and others interested in painting to
go to his house, to see {5} the new kind of picture which Greuze had
introduced into Paris.
Even from artists and critics the picture won a generous meed of
praise; but, containing as it does all the elements which still
appeal to "the man in the street," it was not until 1755, when it was
exhibited at the Salon, that it achieved its greatest triumph. As
long as the exhibition was open the people crowded round this pious
presentment of humble life which had strayed so unaccountably amongst
the pictures of the Court painters--pictures which for many years, as
we shall see, had been free from the suspicion of any odour of
sanctity.
"Whence comes he? Whose pupil is he?" asked the bewildered
Academicians, who, in the manner of Academicians, could not believe
it possible for an artist outside their circle to attain either
excellence or fame. The answer came, "He is a pupil of Diderot."
Although this answer did not contain the whole truth, it was yet
significant of a change that was taking place in the aspirations of
many French people. Diderot, a clever and copious man of letters,
had commenced to write about pictures, and he was now advocating that
art should be devoted to the cause of morality. Greuze's picture
happening to coincide with his own idea, he at once wrote an
enthusiastic, one may almost say a gushing, eulogy of this and other
similar works of the artist; and in that way he helped to swell the
renown which Greuze had now achieved.
{6}
Meanwhile, the artist, with that perversity which one has noted in
the early life of other famous men, must now leave his own path to go
to study art in Italy. Hundreds of years have been needed to
convince painters that the Italian artists wrought great pictures
because they expressed their own ideas of beauty, just as away from
Italy Rembrandt "saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the
Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants
were not Greeks." "I do not study the ancients," wrote Chantrey,
heedless of syntax, "but I study where the ancients studied--nature."
The ambition of Greuze at this time was to belong to that singularly
dreary and barren class of painters known as historical painters; and
he wasted some years in the pursuit of a project which, in the end,
brought him one of the most crushing humiliations of his whole life.
"Woe to the artist," Goethe has written, "who leaves his hut to
squander himself in academic halls of state!" and this woe fell upon
Greuze in exceeding bitterness when his first historical picture was
exhibited. But that incident belongs to the year 1769, and it was at
the end of the year 1755, when he was thirty years of age, that he
went to Italy.
Almost the only effect of his stay of two years in Italy was that for
some time the figures in his pictures were arrayed in the
"resplendent small clothes" of the people of that country, and had
also Italian names. The {7} painter who did really influence Greuze
was Rubens, who was not an Italian, and whose pictures, no further
away than the Luxembourg in Paris, it was in later years one of the
great delights of his life to study.
In the list of Greuze's works for the year 1757 we notice amongst
some pictures of the _genre_ type--the representation, that is, of
the life of the humble--a number of paintings which have Italian
names; and then there are portraits, and the first of that long
series of heads of girls and boys whose fame has outlasted the fame
of all his more pretentious works.
Greuze's industry was now very great, and in 1761 there was exhibited
one more of his greater triumphs, _Un Mariage à l'instant où le Père
de l'accordée delivre la dot à son gendre_, a picture which created
another sensation in Paris. It was unfinished when the Salon of that
year was opened, and was hung only during the last few days of the
exhibition. But all through these days people gathered round it with
the same avidity with which they had elbowed one another for a peep
at _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants_.
During the next two years Greuze painted portraits and heads of
children, and the year 1769 is notable because of his unhappy attempt
to become a member of the Academy as an historical painter. He had,
as we have seen, been made _agréé_, but he had not yet complied with
the rule that required each member to provide the Academy with one of
his pictures. {8} The picture he now submitted bore the sufficiently
comprehensive title of _Septime-Sévère reprochant à son fils
Caracalla d'avoir attenté à sa vie dans les défilés d'Ecosse et lui
disant:--Si tu désires ma mort, ordonne à Papinien de me la donner_.
The members of the Academy assembled, and the picture was placed upon
an easel that they might examine it, while Greuze awaited their
verdict in another room. In an hour the artist was admitted.
"Monsieur Greuze," said the director, "the Academy receives you; come
forward and take the oath." When this ceremony had been completed
the director continued, "You have been received; but it is as a
painter of _genre_. The Academy has considered your former
productions, which are excellent, but it has closed its eyes upon
this picture, which is worthy neither of the Academy nor of you."
Greuze was astounded and disappointed; and he commenced to stammer
out a confused defence of the picture, the worst probably that he
ever painted. Then Lagrenée, taking a pencil from one of his
pockets, pointed out some of the mistakes in drawing on the canvas.
Greuze, cut to the heart, went away, and continued a defence of his
picture in the newspapers.
One of the letters which Greuze sent to the public journals is an
interesting revelation of how little of what is understood now as art
went to the making of an historical painting. Greuze wrote:
{9}
"In the continuation of your comments upon the pictures exhibited at
the Salon in the last number of your journal you have been unjust
towards me upon two points; and as an honourable man you would no
doubt wish to remove these injustices in your next issue. In the
first place, instead of treating me as you have treated the other
artists, my confrères, to whom you have offered, in a few lines, the
tribute of commendation which they have merited, you have gone out of
your way to discuss, with the public, how, according to your opinion,
Poussin would have painted the same subject. I do not doubt, sir,
that Poussin, of the same subject, would have made a sublime work;
but to a certainty he would have painted a very different picture
from the one which you have imagined. I must ask you to believe that
I have studied, as carefully as you have been able to study, the
works of that great man, and I have, above all, sought to acquire the
art of endowing my characters with dramatic expression. You have
carried your views a long way, it is true, inasmuch as you have
remarked that Poussin would have put the clasps of the cloaks upon
the right side, while I have put that of the robe of Caracalla upon
the left--surely a very grave error! But I do not surrender so
easily concerning the character which you pretend that Poussin would
have given to the Emperor. All the world knows that Severus was the
most passionate, the most violent of men, and you would wish {10}
that when he says to his son, 'If thou desirest my death, order
Papinian to kill me with that sword,' he should, in my picture, have
an air as calm and as tranquil as Solomon had in similar
circumstances. I ask all sensible men to judge whether that was or
was not the expression which should have been put on the face of that
redoubtable Emperor.
"Another injustice, much greater still, is that, after you had
endeavoured to discover how Poussin would have treated this subject,
you have assumed that I had the idea to paint Geta, the brother of
Caracalla, in the personage that I have placed behind Papinian.
First of all, Geta was not present at that scene; it was Castor the
chamberlain, one of the most faithful servants of Severus. In the
second place, in supposing gratuitously, as you have done, that I had
the design to represent Geta, you would have been right to have
reproached me if I had painted him too old, because he was the
younger brother of Caracalla. Thirdly, I should still have been
wrong if I had not painted him in his armour. You see, sir, what
absurdities you have attributed to me in order that you might indulge
your love of criticism. I believe you to be a man too honest to
refuse me the satisfaction of making this letter public in your
journal. It is due to me to be allowed to explain my own picture and
to correct the interpretation which you have given to it without
consulting me and without consulting history.
{11}
"Do you wish to discourage an artist who sacrifices all to merit the
favours with which the public has so far honoured him? Why, upon my
first essay, attack me so openly? This is to me a new kind of
painting, but it is one in which I flatter myself that I shall become
perfect as time goes on. Why compare me alone, amongst all my
confrères, to the most learned painter of the French school? If you
have done this to indulge me, you have not done it happily, for I can
find nothing in all that article but a marked design to annoy me.
Nor shall I be able to recognise any other than that design--a most
unworthy one in a writer who ought to be impartial--until I have seen
your willingness to print my letter in your journal."
It will be noticed that in this letter there is not a single word
written about art. All the discussion turns upon archæological
details. Poussin is not mentioned as an artist, but merely as a
"learned painter," and we shall see, when we discuss the position
held by Greuze amongst French artists, that scholars, excellent in
their own place, came at length to push the painters "from their
stools," with very disastrous results for the art of France.
Even Diderot turned upon this picture and condemned it; for he and
his followers now saw that after all Greuze was not the painter of
morality for whom they had been seeking. Greuze, it appeared, was
ready "to pay homage to traditional conventions," and to become a
{12} backslider from the ideals which they had cherished. After this
scene Greuze refused to exhibit any of his pictures at the annual
exhibitions of the Academy until the Revolution swept away
restrictions, and opened the doors of the Salon to all artists. He
also shook the dust of Paris from his feet, and lived for a time in
Anjou, where he painted a number of pictures, including that portrait
of Madame de Porcin which is to-day one of the treasures of the
museum of Angers.
When Greuze returned to Paris his repute was greater than it had ever
been before. It was now the fashion to visit his studio, and royal
princes, the nobility, the Emperor Joseph the Second and other
foreign notabilities came to see _La Cruche Cassée_, _La Malédiction
Paternelle_, _La Dame de Charité_, _Le Fils Puni_, and other
paintings which happened at that time to be still in his possession.
He amassed money notwithstanding the great losses caused by his
wife's lawless extravagance. High prices were paid for his
paintings, and the engravers Massard, Gaillard, Levasseur and Flipart
were kept busy making plates, the impressions from which were in the
houses of Paris, of the provinces, and of foreign countries.
Moreover, curious dilettanti, people of the kind whose chief regard
is for technical and accidental states of the plates, began to
collect these engravings, and to compete with one another to possess
them. One engraver, Jean Georges Wille, had always been the staunch
friend of {13} Greuze; and his son, Pierre Alexandre, became a pupil
in Greuze's studio. At a time when the artist had been less known,
it was Wille who disseminated a knowledge of his works, not only in
France, but also in Germany.
POVERTY AND DEATH
Suddenly, amidst all the splendour of his great reputation, the
Revolution smote Paris, and Greuze was bereaved of all his glory.
The pension he had received from the King ceased with the authority
of the King. The attention of the people was withdrawn from him, and
such regard as was paid to pictures during this distracted epoch went
to the paintings of David, who was both painter and politician.
Greuze's ironical inquiry each morning, "Who is King to-day, then?"
is significant of the instability of the time. No more the elite of
Paris crowded round his easel; but one of his two daughters still
remained with him; and a number of his scholars, especially his girl
pupils, were faithful to the end.
"You have a family and you have talent, young man," he once said to
Prudhon; "that is enough in these days to bring about one's death by
starvation. Look at my cuffs," continued the old man bitterly; and
then Greuze would show him his torn shirt-sleeves, "for even he could
no longer find means of getting on in the new order of things."
{14}
How poor he was may be inferred from his letter to the Minister of
the Interior: "The picture which I am painting for the government is
but half finished. The situation in which I find myself has forced
me to ask you to pay me part of the money in advance, so that I may
be enabled to finish the work. I have been honoured by your sympathy
in all my misfortunes; I have lost everything but my talent and my
courage. I am seventy-five years of age, and have not a single order
for a picture; indeed, this is the most painful moment of my life.
You have a kind heart, and I flatter myself that you will relieve me
in accordance with the urgency of my need."
"Well, Greuze," said his friend Barthélemy one day to him, when
sitting at his bedside.
"Well, my friend," replied the artist, "I am dying.... I am
commencing to know no longer what I am saying; but patience! yet a
little while and I shall say nothing more."
"_Allons, mon ami_--courage, one doesn't die on the first day of
spring."
"Ah! my God, since the Sans-culottides I have taken no heed of the
seasons. Are we in _Ventóse_ or in _Germinal_? Is to-day Saint
_Pissenlit_ or _Saint Asperge_?"
"What matters! See how beautifully the sun shines."
"I am quite at ease for my journey. Adieu, Barthelemy. I await you
at my burial. You will be all alone like the poor man's dog."
{15}
So in poverty and neglect the artist died. There is a tradition that
when Napoleon heard of it, he exclaimed, "Dead! poor and neglected!
Why did he not speak? I would have given him a pitcher made of
Sèvres china, filled to the brim with gold, for every copy of his
_Broken Pitcher_."
At the funeral, when the coffin rested in the church, a lady, whose
emotion could not be hidden, even by the thick veil which she wore,
advanced to the coffin, and placed upon it a bouquet of
_immortelles_. She then withdrew again to an obscure part of the
church. Tied to the bouquet was discovered a piece of paper which
bore this inscription: "These flowers, offered by the most grateful
of his pupils, are the emblem of his glory."
A newspaper of the time gave the name of the young lady as
Mademoiselle Mayer, the artist who, before she committed suicide, did
so much to cheer the desolate life of Prudhon, and who now occupies
the same tomb as Prudhon in the cemetery of Père la Chaise in Paris.
Madame de Valory, however, the god-daughter of Greuze, has stated
that the woman was Madame Jubot, another of the pupils of Greuze.
Tournus neglected him in his life, but to-day is proud of its
illustrious son. A monument of the artist has been erected in the
town, some of his pictures hang in the church and in the museum, and
a tablet marks the house in which he was born.
{16}
ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY
It was peculiarly fitting that a lady should deposit upon the coffin
of Greuze a bouquet of _immortelles_, for his romantic and chivalrous
regard for women, from a very early period in his career, had a great
influence upon his life and work. Even as a pupil of Grandon, Greuze
fell in love with his master's wife, a woman of very great beauty and
charm. He never told his love; but one day Grandon's daughter
surprised Greuze on his knees in the studio. She asked him what he
was doing there, and he replied that he was looking for something he
had lost. But she had seen that he had one of her mother's shoes,
and that he was covering it with ardent kisses.
Exceptionally romantic, too, was his love for the beautiful Lætitia
during the two years that he spent in Italy. Greuze had carried with
him to that country letters of introduction to the Duc del Or...., by
whom he had been received with great cordiality. The Duke's wife had
died, but he had a charming daughter, Lætitia, to whom it was
arranged that Greuze should give lessons in painting. Greuze was a
man to whom women and girls were instinctively attracted, and Lætitia
fell in love with him, with all the violence and passion of the
Italian temperament. Her beauty and her charming manners had also
fascinated Greuze; but he was very much disconcerted when he found
that she loved him, because he was conscious {17} of the gulf which
birth and fortune had placed between them. He, therefore, rigorously
repressed his desire to see her, and forced himself to stay away from
the palace.
Meanwhile, his doleful demeanour, innocent face, and light curls
obtained for him, from Fragonard and other French students, who were
in Italy at the time, the name of the love-sick cherub.
Greuze at length heard that Lætitia was ill, and that no one could
discover the cause or nature of her malady. He loitered near her
home to try to obtain tidings of her, and one day he encountered the
Duke, who took him to the palace to show him two pictures by Titian,
which he had recently purchased.
"My daughter," he said, "has promised herself the pleasure of copying
them when her health has been restored. I hope that you will come to
superintend her work. That is what she wishes."
The Duke further asked Greuze to make a copy of one of the pictures
as soon as he could, because he wished to send the copy away as a
present. Greuze could not refuse; and thus he was soon installed in
the palace again, working there day by day. Each morning he was
informed, by an old retainer of the family, who had been Lætitia's
nurse, how the young lady fared. The old nurse knew the two were in
love with each other. Indeed, a little later, she arranged a secret
interview between them, {18} and Greuze found his idol pale and thin,
but not less beautiful than before.
At first neither of them could speak; but, encouraged by the nurse,
Lætitia blurted out:
"Monsieur Greuze, I love you. Tell me frankly, do you love me?"
Greuze was too happy to speak, and Lætitia, mistaking the cause of
his silence, hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears.
This melted Greuze to the uttermost. He threw himself at her feet,
and then, in the intervals between his impetuous kisses, he poured
out impassioned declarations of his love.
"I can now be happy," cried Lætitia, clapping her hands, and behaving
like a gladdened child. She ran and embraced her nurse, and again
and again gave expression to her ecstasy. "Listen to me, you two;
here is my scheme. I love Greuze, and I will marry him."
"My dear child, you dream," replied the nurse. "What about your
father?"
"My nurse, you wish to say that my father will not consent. Well I
know that. He wishes me to marry his eternal Casa--the oldest and
the ugliest of men; or the young Count Palleri, whom I do not know,
nor ever wish to know. I am rich through my mother, and I give my
fortune to Greuze, whom I marry. He takes me to France, and you will
follow us there."
And intoxicated with the future which she had arranged, she detailed,
with a delicious {19} volubility, the life that they would lead
together in Paris. Greuze would continue to paint. He would become
another Titian, and in the end her father would be proud to have such
a son-in-law.
When Greuze next saw Lætitia he had had time to review all the
circumstances, and he appeared with a woeful face. Lætitia derided
him, and then tried to coax him tenderly out of his gloomy mood. At
last, becoming angry, she called him perfidious, and reproached him
that he had pretended to love her that he might the more easily break
her heart. She cried and tore her hair, and Greuze fell at her feet,
and promised to obey her blindly.
But as soon as he had left the palace he saw the folly of it all. He
saw the despair of her father, heard his maledictions, and felt his
vengeance, and all the misfortune which would come upon their love.
He then decided that he would not relent again, nor see Lætitia any
more. As an excuse for not visiting her he pretended that he was
ill, and this simulated illness became real. For three months he was
ailing, and part of the time he was consumed by fever and delirium.
At the end of his illness Lætitia was still eager to marry him; but
with extraordinary firmness of will he resisted the temptation and
fled from Italy, carrying with him secretly a copy of the portrait of
Lætitia, which he had painted for her father.
Many years later, when Greuze was once {20} more a poor man, he wrote
in reply to the Grand Duchess of Russia, who had offered ten thousand
livres for the portrait of Lætitia, "If you were to give me all the
riches of the Empire of Russia they would not pay for that picture,"
and probably in his old age he read yet again the letter he had
received from Lætitia, eight years after he quitted Rome. "Yes, my
dear Greuze, your old pupil is now a good mother; I have five
charming children, whom I adore. My eldest daughter is worthy to be
offered as a subject for your happy talent; she is beautiful as an
angel. Ask the Prince d'Este. My husband almost convinces me that I
continue to be young and pretty, so much does he still love me. As I
have told you, this happiness is due to you, and I love you for
having prevented me from loving you."
Greuze had scarcely returned from Italy when he was attracted by
Mademoiselle Anne-Gabrielle Babuty, who was in charge of a bookshop
in Paris. Diderot, who had himself been very much in love with her,
has described her as a smart dashing young woman, of upright
carriage, and with a complexion of lilies and roses. De Goncourt
also speaks of her numerous charms. She had a pretty face, which
Greuze seemed to be never tired of painting. It was the smooth face
of a child, and had an attractive roundness, and a soft, tender,
peach-like delicate complexion. The expression was simple and
unaffected, and there was enough of piquancy to animate a face {21}
which, for all its manifold good qualities, would else have had a
tendency towards insipidity. Her eyebrows were very much arched, and
this circumstance lent to her face its expression of naïveté. Her
eyelashes were long, and when her eyes were downcast they gave a
charming look to her face, resting like a caress upon her cheeks.
Her little nose, the nose of a child, was exquisitely formed, and
seemed to indicate an alert and lively character, and her rosy lips
were also finely shaped, and particularly alluring.
Her portrait appears often in the paintings of Greuze in _La
Philosophie Endormie_, _La Mère Bien Aimée_, _La Voluptueuse_, and in
many others.
The story of their first encounter, and of their subsequent
relations, is best told by a few extracts from a document which
Greuze had cause to execute some years afterwards. He wrote:
"A few days after having arrived from Rome--I know not by what
fatality--I passed along the _Rue Saint Jacques_, and saw in her shop
Mademoiselle Babuty, who was the daughter of a bookseller.
"I was struck with admiration, for she had a very beautiful figure;
and that I might have a better chance of seeing her I bought a number
of books. Her face was without character, and was indeed rather
sheep-like. I paid her as many compliments as she could wish, and
she knew who I was, for my reputation had already commenced, and I
had been recognised by the Academy.
{22}
"She was then thirty and some odd years of age, and therefore in
danger of remaining single all her life. She employed all the
cajoleries that were possible to attach me to her, and to cause me to
come again, and I continued to pay her visits for about a month. One
afternoon I found her more animated than usual. She took one of my
hands, and, regarding me with a very passionate look, she said,
'Monsieur Greuze, would you marry me if I were to consent?'
"I avow I was confounded by such a question. I said to her,
'Mademoiselle, would not one be too happy to pass his life with a
woman so lovable as you are?'
"Of course, this was but lightly said, yet that did not prevent her
from taking action at once; for, upon the very next morning, she went
with her mother to the Quai des Orfèvres, and there bought, at the
shop of Monsieur Strass, earrings of false diamonds, and next day she
did not hesitate to wear these in her ears.
"As she lived in a shop, the neighbours were not slow in paying her
compliments, and in asking her who had presented these jewels to her.
"With downcast eyes she answered softly, 'It is Monsieur Greuze who
has given them to me.'
"'You are married, then?'
"'Ah, no;' but this was said in a way that implied that secretly she
had married me. My friends began at once to congratulate me, but I
assured them there was nothing more false than {23} the news they had
heard, and that I had not money enough to enable me to marry.
"Outraged at such effrontery, I did not return to Mademoiselle Babuty
any more. I lived at that time in _le faubourg Saint Germain_, _rue
du Petit Lion_, in an hotel of furnished rooms called _l'Hôtel des
Vignes_. Three days passed, during which I heard no more of the
matter, and I was already thinking of other affairs, when one fine
day she came knocking at my door accompanied by her little servant
girl. I took no notice of the knocks, but she knew I was there, and
she attacked my door with her hands and feet like a veritable fury.
Then, to prevent a public scandal, I opened my door, and she threw
herself into my room all in tears. She said to me:
"'I have done wrong, Monsieur Greuze, but it is love which has misled
me. It is the attachment I have for you which has made me resort to
such a stratagem. My life is in your hands.' Then she flung herself
at my knees, and said she would not rise again until I had promised
that I would marry her. She took my two hands in hers, and they were
wet with tears. I pitied her, and I promised all she wished.
"We were not married until two years afterwards, in the parish of
Saint Medard--which was not her parish--for fear of the pleasantries
that would have been made, seeing that she had said that we were
already married. I commenced housekeeping with twenty-six livres the
day after our wedding."
{24}
During the first seven years of their married life they had three
children. One of the children died, leaving the artist and his wife
with two daughters.
Concerning these seven years no complaint is made about the conduct
of Madame Greuze; but from that time it would be difficult to find a
more unhappy household than that of Greuze. His wife was a continual
torment, hindering him in his work, putting his life on a lower
level, and making his home intolerable. Diderot even blamed her for
the infelicity of his Academy picture, and Greuze himself suspected
her of having poisoned the minds of the members of the Academy
against him.
Her faithlessness, gross as it was, received further aggravation from
the insolent openness in which it manifested itself. She received
men of the most disreputable character at her house, caring naught
whether her husband knew or not; and she polluted the morals of his
boy pupils. Her children she neglected and put into a convent, one
for eleven years, and the other for twelve. "It is a year and seven
days since mamma saw us," said one of the girls sadly one day, when
their father had gone to visit them.
Many a time Greuze went in bodily fear of her violence. When she
asked for the help of a servant, and Greuze suggested that she should
wait a little longer, until he could pay the wages of one, she dealt
him, with all her might, a blow upon his face. She squandered in all
{25} manner of foolish extravagance the large fortune which Greuze
received from the sale of the engravings from his works; and then she
destroyed his account books, that the extent of her defalcations
might never be known. Her household duties were abandoned, and
Greuze nearly died when one day he warmed for himself some food in a
saucepan in which verdigris had been suffered to accumulate.
At last her violence, her rank immorality, her extravagance and her
neglect could be borne no longer, and in despair Greuze obtained from
the magistrates the legal right to live apart from his wife.
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
The sadness of the story of Greuze's married life is all the more
touching because he had the qualities of a true and tender husband.
It is indeed not less than a tragedy that, constituted as he was, he
should have been denied the companionship of a woman worthy of the
great affection of which his nature was capable. Often querulous and
brusque with men, his manner with women was gracious and respectful,
his politeness the true politeness of the kind heart that desires the
well-being of others. As we have seen, his relations with Lætitia
were governed by a most chivalrous ideal of conduct, an ideal which
seems quite quixotic when we think of the period in which he lived.
As Lætitia had been attracted towards him, so {26} also were most of
the women who moved in his social sphere; and, eager as he was for
praise from men, it came with added sweetness from the lips of women.
It is not surprising that he painted women with such perfect charm,
because his heart was in the work.
Greuze, though only of middle height, had yet an impressive
personality; and people of any discernment saw at a glance that he
was a man of distinction. His head was well formed, his forehead
high, his eyes large and bright, and of a good shape, and his
features indicated genius, candour, and an energetic will.
His conversation was sincere and elevated, and often piquant and
animated. He sometimes showed signs of nervousness and irritability,
and became quite fiery when his work was criticised, or when he
thought he was not receiving the treatment which his vanity prompted
him to think he ought to receive.
This self-esteem, always abnormal, had been increased by his early
success with _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants_.
"Our painter is a little vain," wrote Diderot in 1765, "but his
vanity is that of a child;" and it was generally recognised that
there was very much of naïveté in his conceit, and that his good
qualities compensated for any displays of childish self-sufficiency.
At times his talk became inflated and bombastic. "Oh, sir!" he would
say, concerning his own picture, "here is a work which {27}
astonishes even me who painted it. I cannot understand how a man
can, with a few pounded earths, animate a canvas in this way," and no
ridicule could cure him of this flamboyant manner.
"That is beautiful," said Monsieur de Marigny, standing before
Greuze's painting of _La Pleureuse_.
"Sir, I know it; moreover, people praise me, and yet I am in need of
more commissions."
"It is because you have a host of enemies," said Vernet, who was
present at the time, "and amongst those enemies is one who appears to
love you to the verge of folly, but he will nevertheless ruin you."
"And who is that?"
"It is yourself."
Greuze's irritability sometimes revealed itself in downright
rudeness. Natoire, the professor at the Academy, looking through a
portfolio of drawings of some other artist, questioned the accuracy
of one of the figures, whereupon Greuze turned upon him and said:
"Sir, you would be happy if you could draw one as well."
The Dauphin, when Greuze had painted his portrait, wishing to show
how pleased he was with Greuze's work, paid him the high compliment
of suggesting that he should now paint the portrait of the Dauphine,
who was present. Greuze looked at her face, and alluding to the
thick covering of rouge which appeared upon {28} her cheeks, asked to
be excused, for he could not paint such a face as that. No wonder
that Mariette should say that Greuze had the manners of a cobbler.
There are also hints that Greuze was sometimes jealous. In _Un Homme
d'Autrefois_, by the Marquis Costa de Beauregard, it has been
narrated that Henry Costa, one of the author's ancestors, wishing to
be an artist, went at the age of fourteen years to Paris. He was
received with great kindness by Greuze, and the enthusiastic boy said
"_il parle comme un ange_," but in an article contributed by Augustus
Mansion to _Temple Bay_ we have read, "Another chagrin followed.
Greuze became jealous of his prodigy, tried to shake him off, ignored
letters, and declined to permit himself to be seen at work. It was
an unkindness keenly felt by the boy, who was learning every day a
little more of the world: '_Quelle froideur et quelle mystère!_' he
says. 'Greuze told me he could not communicate certain processes he
was employing, that what was useful for him might not be the same for
me. I cannot understand how a fine genius can be capable of such
meanness.'"
Yet one cannot estimate the whole character of Greuze by these
isolated incidents. Like other people, he said and did different
things when he was in different moods, and we know that when the
artists of Paris held aloof from Prudhon, whose poverty had compelled
him to "draw vignettes on letter sheets for the {29} government
offices, business cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for
bon-bonnières... Greuze alone treated him amicably."
Greuze's industry was abnormal. As a worker he seemed indefatigable.
He was absorbed in his art, putting all his soul and brains into his
pictures, and seeming to live for his work, and for no other thing.
{30}
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WORK
There is so little variety in the works of Greuze that if one divides
them into two main classes, nearly all his pictures, with the
exception of the portraits, may be placed in one or other of these
two divisions. In one class there are his _genre_ pictures,
containing as a rule many figures; and then, better known than these,
and of greater merit, are his single heads of girls and boys, which
constitute the other principal category.
His first great success was achieved with his picture of the _genre_
class, _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants_, and this
book contains an illustration from another popular work of this sort
called _L'Accordée de Village_. A section of this volume explains
the relative position of Greuze in the history of art, and reasons
are given which account for the great acclamation with which this and
similar works were received in Paris when first they were exhibited.
Meanwhile we will consider the intrinsic merits of these pictures
without reference to the novelty of their appearance--an appearance
in which a number of adventitious circumstances are involved.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE BRIDE. (L'Accordée de Village.)]
{31}
In painting pictures of scenes in the life of humble people, Greuze
had an aim other than the representation of some beauty of nature by
which his own emotions had been profoundly stirred. He wished to
play the schoolmaster, and the history of painting has demonstrated
that, whatever may be the immediate effect of pictures that have been
wrought in this mood, they have never been the pictures that have
endured for all time the test of a comparison with the severest
standards of excellence in art, and they have invariably sunk into
their own place--amongst pictures not in the first class.
Again and again it has been shown that a man cannot be a preacher or
a story-writer on canvas and at the same time an artist of the first
rank. The reason for this is that it is not the function of
pictorial art to tell tales, nor to preach sermons, though artists
can do both, and yet be very popular.
"Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking
on his hind legs: it is not done well; but you are surprised to find
it done at all." And one may apply the same remark to the
pulpiteering of the painter with much less risk of evoking a protest.
During recent years this truth has begun to receive recognition.
Théophile Gautier has written strenuously against story-telling
pictures, and Whistler has argued that Art "is, withal, selfishly
occupied with her own perfection only--having no desire to
teach--seeking {32} and finding the beautiful in all conditions and
in all times."
While these opinions of modern critics upon anecdotal art are in our
minds, it will be appropriate to mention Greuze's own views as
revealed in what he called "_une note historique_" upon his painting
of _La Belle-Mère_. "For a long time I had wished," he says, "to
paint that character, but in each sketch the expression of the
stepmother always appeared to me to be feeble and unsatisfactory.
One day, however, when I was crossing the Pont-Neuf, I saw two women,
who spoke to one another with much vehemence. One of them began to
shed tears, and she exclaimed, 'Such a stepmother too! Yes, she gave
me bread, but in giving it to me she broke my teeth.' That was a
_coup de lumière_ for me; I returned to the house, and I made the
sketch for my picture, which contains five figures: the step-mother,
the daughter of the dead mother, the grandmother of the orphan, the
daughter of the stepmother, and a child of three years. I have
supposed in my picture that it is the dinner-hour, and that the poor
little girl goes to take a seat at the table with the other children.
Then the stepmother takes a piece of bread from the table, and,
holding the orphan back by her apron, thrusts the bread roughly into
her mouth. I have set myself the task of showing in that action the
deliberate hate of the woman. The child seeks to evade her
stepmother's violence, and seems as one {33} who would say, 'Why
would you ill-use me? I have done you no harm.' The child's
expression is a mixture of shyness and of fear. Her grandmother is
at the other end of the table. Harrowed by grief, she lifts her eyes
to heaven, and, with hands trembling, seems to say, 'Ah! my daughter,
where are you? What misfortunes! what bitterness!' The daughter of
the stepmother, not at all sympathetic concerning the lot of her
sister, laughs to witness the despair of the poor old woman, and, in
ridicule, draws her mother's attention to her gestures. The infant
of the family, whose heart has not yet been corrupted, gratefully
stretches out her arms towards the sister who has bestowed so much
kindness upon her. I have wished to paint a woman who maltreats a
child that does not belong to her, and who, by a double crime, has
also corrupted the heart of her own daughter."
Here, then, we see an anecdotal painting in the making. Although
this rehearsal is very touching, as a revelation of the kind heart of
the man, it yet seems to-day a particularly naïve exposition of the
motive for a work of art. Nothing could show with greater clearness
the wide gulf that, in the art world, lies between the end of the
eighteenth century and the end of a century which closed with
discussions of the theories of impressionists, vibrists, symbolists
and pointillists, and with the theories of those who, denying that
art is primarily moral, or even intellectual, have contended that it
is {34} simply a means by which we are made to respond to an artist's
emotion.
If Whistler, to mention an artist representative of some newer
movements than those of the eighteenth century, had been on the
Pont-Neuf, from what a different source would have come any _coup de
lumière_ which might have flashed into his brain! Not during high
noon, nor in the gossip of the people, would he have found the motive
for his paintings. His _coup de lumière_ would have come "when the
evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and
the buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys
become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and
the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us--then
the wayfarer hastens home; and the working man and the cultured one,
the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they
have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune,
sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her
master--her son in that he loves her, her master in that he knows
her."
Whistler's eyes would have been directed towards the beauties of
colour and of tone that he might find on the river or on its banks;
and the Isle de France, as it is seen by the tired journalist as he
makes his way to the Latin Quarter at dawn of day, with its tender
grays, and its evasive charms of exquisite light and colour, would be
of more account to him than {35} all the conversations in the world,
however vehement they might be. The idea of preaching or moralizing
on canvas would never have entered his head for a moment.