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Masterpieces in Colour
Edited by--T. Leman Hare
GREUZE
1725-1805
* * * * * *
“MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR” SERIES
ARTIST. AUTHOR.
BELLINI. GEORGE HAY.
BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS.
BOUCHER. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY.
CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY.
CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY.
CONSTABLE. C. LEWIS HIND.
COROT. SIDNEY ALLNUTT.
DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL.
DELACROIX. PAUL G. KONODY.
DÜRER. H. E. A. FURST.
FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON.
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI. PAUL G. KONODY.
FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY.
GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD.
GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
HOGARTH. C. LEWIS HIND.
HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE.
INGRES. A. J. FINBERG.
LAWRENCE. S. L. BENSUSAN.
LE BRUN, VIGÉE. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY.
LUINI. JAMES MASON.
MANTEGNA. MRS. ARTHUR BELL.
MEMLINC. W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY.
MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER.
MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
PERUGINO. SELWYN BRINTON.
RAEBURN. JAMES L. CAW.
RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY.
REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS.
REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND.
ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO.
RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
SARGENT. T. MARTIN WOOD.
TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND.
VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER.
VAN EYCK. J. CYRIL M. WEALE.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN.
WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND.
WATTS. W. LOFTUS HARE.
WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD.
_Others in Preparation._
* * * * * *
[Illustration: PLATE I.--L’ACCORDÉE DU VILLAGE. (Frontispiece)
This picture, at first entitled “A Father handing over the
Marriage-portion of his Daughter,” then “The Village Bride,” is
the best of Greuze’s subject pictures. The scene is more or less
naturally arranged, and informed with the tender homely sentiment
inspired by the subject; and the bride, with her fresh young face
and modest attitude, is a delicious figure. It was exhibited in the
Salon of 1761, and now hangs in the Louvre.]
GREUZE
by
ALYS EYRE MACKLIN
Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour
[Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.]
London: T. C. & E. C. Jack
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
CONTENTS
Chap. Page
I. Early Days and First Success 11
II. The Times in which Greuze Lived 20
III. Greuze’s Moral Pictures 27
IV. The Pictures by which we know Greuze 35
V. The Vanity of Greuze 44
VI. “The Broken Pitcher” and other well-known Pictures 52
VII. Ruin and Death 62
VIII. The Art of Greuze 71
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I. L’Accordée du Village Frontispiece
In the Louvre
Page
II. L’Innocence tenant deux Pigeons 14
In the Wallace Collection
III. La Malédiction paternelle 24
In the Louvre
IV. Portrait d’Homme 34
In the Louvre
V. L’Oiseau Mort 40
In the Louvre
VI. Les Deux Sœurs 50
In the Louvre
VII. La Cruche Cassée 60
In the Louvre
VIII. La Laitière 70
In the Louvre
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS AND FIRST SUCCESS
Few names suggest so much beauty as that of Greuze.
“Greuze”--“a Greuze”--you have only to hear the word and there rises
before your mental vision a radiant procession of maidens each
lovelier than the last, with the blue of a spring sky in their
shining eyes, rosy blood flushing delicate cheeks, soft silken hair
escaping in gold-touched curls at temples where the blue veins show,
lips like dewy carnations, rounded necks and curving bosoms that
suggest all the sweets of June. A veritable “garden of girls” in the
first fresh bloom of budding womanhood; and they come to you not so
much as painted pictures as delicate visions breathed on canvas from
which they might at any moment tremble into pulsing life.
Yet the Greuze to whom we owe this exquisite series was first known as
the painter of pictures of a very different kind. Before speaking of
these let us begin at the beginning, by seeing when and under what
conditions the child who was to become the poet-painter of a certain
type of womanhood first saw the world he was destined to enrich.
Born at Tournus, a little town near Macon in France, on August 21,
1725, the early life of Jean Baptiste Greuze curiously resembles in
its broad lines those of many other well-known artists. His parents
were humble people who lived in the tiny house at Tournus, now
decorated with a commemorative plaque; the father an overman slater;
and the godparents, who play such an important part in the life of the
French child, respectively a slater and a baker. The father seems to
have been ambitious, for he resolved to take his son into an evidently
expanding business, not as a workman, but as architect. At the usual
early age, however, the child’s vocation declared itself. It was in
vain the father, alarmed by symptoms that threatened to disarrange his
plans, took materials from him and then whipped him for making
pictures all over the walls--anywhere, everywhere. The boy cared for
nothing but drawing of a kind that did not fall in with the cherished
architectural idea, and after many struggles he won the day by giving
his father for a birthday present a pen-and-ink drawing of the head of
St. James, well enough done to be at first mistaken for an engraving.
This had been copied at nights when he was supposed to be asleep, and
touched and convinced, the father finally gave in and sent him off to
Lyons to learn the business in the studio of the painter Grandon.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--L’INNOCENCE TENANT DEUX PIGEONS
“L’Innocence tenant deux Pigeons,” or “Innocence holding two
Pigeons,” is a typical example of the eyes Greuze never tired of
painting, large innocent orbs with a sparkle that suggests the
morning sun on flowers wet with dew. The moist half-open lips
you also find in most of his girl-heads. The lovely colour
scheme is particularly happy even for Greuze. The original is in
the Wallace Collection, London.]
The term “learn the business” is used advisedly. Grandon’s studio was
more a manufactory of pictures than anything else, and was just as bad
a school as a young artist could well have. Pictures were copied,
recopied, and adapted, turned out for all the world as Jean Baptiste’s
godmother turned the loaves out of her oven; and while the boy learnt
the use of colours, and some drawing, he also learnt that facility
which is the deadly enemy of art, artifice rather than invention, to
copy rather than to create--weaknesses which beset him ever
afterwards.
It was natural that, when manhood was arrived at, Greuze should yield
to the inevitable law that draws exceptional talent to great centres.
When he was about twenty he left Lyons, and with very little capital
but his abilities, his blonde beauty, and a large stock of
self-satisfaction, he set out gaily to make his fortune in Paris.
The story of the first ten years there is also the conventional one of
early artist days, the old tale of stress and struggle, of bitter
disappointments alternating with brilliant hopes and small
achievements. Young Greuze was too personal and faulty in his work to
please the Academy, not strong enough yet to convince any advanced
movement there might be, and he divided ten trying years between a
little study at the Academy and a great deal of painting the
pot-boilers he had learnt to make at Lyons. At last his work attracted
the attention and gained for him the friendship of two well-known
artists, Sylvestre, and Pigalle, the King’s sculptor, and they were
instrumental in his being able to exhibit in the Academy of 1755, when
he was thirty years old, the picture which brought him his first
success, “Un Père qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants.”
This picture shows the living room of a raftered cottage, with the old
father sitting at a table round which are gathered his six sons and
daughters. One of his large, horny hands is on the open Bible before
him, the other holds the spectacles he has taken off as he stops to
explain the passage he has been reading. The children listen
respectfully, some attentively, the others with an air of being
absorbed in their own reflections, while the mother, sitting near,
stops her spinning to tell the baby on the floor not to tease the dog.
It is not well painted. Except that it shows a picturesque interior
and expresses the sentiment of piety in the home it is intended to
convey, it has but little merit, is, indeed, so mediocre that you
wonder why, far from bringing fame to the young man, it should have
been noticed at all.
To understand its success, and the still greater success of similar
pictures which followed, you must glance at the epoch of its
production.