Twenty-three paintings represent at the Louvre the art of Jean-Baptiste
Greuze (1725-1805), who trod the safe path of flattering the taste of
the multitude by the mawkish sentimentality of his genre-pieces and the
prettiness and half-concealed sensuality of his “fancy portraits” of
young women, which in their suggestiveness are perhaps more insidious
than the frank improprieties of Boucher and Fragonard. The sentimental
and melodramatic side of Greuze’s art is strikingly revealed in _The
Village Engagement_ (No. 369), in _The Paternal Curse_ (No. 370), and
in _The Punished Son_ (No. 371), which aroused the enthusiasm of that
singularly misguided critic Diderot. But it is the painting of pictures
like _The Broken Pitcher_ (No. 372, Plate XLIII.), _The Milkmaid_ (No.
372A), and _The Dead Bird_ (No. 372C; a replica of the picture in the
Scottish National Gallery), that has made him the idol of a certain
undiscriminating section of the public, and established him among the
world’s most popular painters.