GREUZE’S MORAL PICTURES
The well-known “Village Bride,” or “L’Accordée du Village,” exhibited
in 1761, was his second great success.
“A Father handing over the Marriage-portion of his Daughter” was the
first title of this picture, and one which better, if less poetically,
explains the scene. The homely ceremony takes place in the picturesque
living room of a big cottage or small farm, and twelve people take
part in it. Backed up by the village functionary, who has drawn up the
contract, the old father is evidently giving some good advice as he
places the bag of money in the hands of his future son-in-law. The
young man listens respectfully, the shy but proud young bride hanging
on to his arm. The mother has taken one of her daughter’s hands,
while a younger sister leans her head on the bride’s shoulder.
Children play about in various attitudes among a family of fowls who
feed in the foreground. Though it has some of the faults of those
which followed it, this is undoubtedly the best subject-picture
painted by Greuze. The composition is good, it is well drawn, full of
a charming tender sentiment, and the head of the fiancée,
foreshadowing Greuze’s future successes, is delicious, fully deserving
Gautier’s eulogy: “It is impossible to find anything younger, fresher,
more innocent, and more coquettishly virginal, if the two words may be
connected, than this head.”
Preaching the beauty of family life, the sacredness of marriage, and
the virtues and happiness of the humble, “L’Accordée du Village”
raised a furore. Its material success was equally great. It was sold
for 9000 livres, and later, in 1780, it was bought for the Cabinet du
Roi for 16,650 livres.
Very much less successful from the artistic point of view were the two
well-known pictures now in the Louvre, which appeared three or four
years later, “La Malédiction paternelle” and--a sequel--“Le Fils
puni.”
The first shows the vicious and debauched son trying to tear himself
from the grasp of an agonised mother and little brother, to go away
with the colour-sergeant who is waiting near the door. While the
mother pleads, the father, unable to move from the chair in which
illness holds him, storms, and with hands violently outstretched,
pronounces the curse that terrifies the other shuddering members of
the family.
The punishment is shown in the second picture, when the repentant son,
shabby and travel-stained, returns to find his father dead. His stick
fallen from his trembling hands, his knees giving way beneath him, one
hand on his heart, the other pressed convulsively to his forehead, he
stands helpless at the foot of the bed on which the dead man lies.
Beside him stands his mother, pointing tragically to the corpse, with
an air of saying, “Behold your work!” The other members of the family
are too occupied with their own sorrow to notice him, and give way to
their despair in various attitudes.
The artificiality of pose and gesture more than suggested in
“L’Accordée du Village” is here exaggerated into cheap theatricalness.
In “Le Fils puni,” for example, the attitude of the Prodigal, and the
Lady Macbeth pose of the classically-draped mother, are impossible,
and the outstretched arms, the heaven-turned eyes, and open mouths of
the others are almost offensive. This exaggeration defeats its own
object. You feel that these dramatis personæ are only posing,
tableau-vivant fashion, to impress, and they do not do it well enough
to excite anything but criticism in you. The colour is bad, heavy,
and dull. The draperies hang in stiff folds, without suppleness.
These two canvases are arrangements, not pictures; and in spite of
certain gracious qualities which always charm in Greuze, all the
others of the long series that followed can be dismissed with the same
criticism.
Such was not the opinion of Diderot, the painter’s most admiring
critic and friend. He could not find words in which to adequately
praise productions that proved such “great qualities of the heart, and
such good morals.”
“Beautiful! Very beautiful! Sublime! Courage, my friend Greuze;
continue always to paint such subjects, so that when you come to die
there will be nothing you have painted you can recall without
pleasure.”
“Le Paralytique, ou la Piété filiale,” “Le Fruit d’une bonne
Education,” now in the celebrated Hermitage Gallery in Russia, “La
Bénédiction paternelle,” are further examples of this series of the
ten commandments turned badly into paint and canvas, and less
interesting still are subjects of the order of “The Torn Will,”
falling, as they do, into the form of the cheapest melodrama.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--PORTRAIT D’HOMME
A very good example of Greuze as a portraitist. This picture is
in the Louvre, and is remarkable for its delicate harmonious
colouring and the living expression in the eyes. The man seems
to be listening to some one, and on the point of opening his
mouth to reply.]