THE PICTURES BY WHICH WE KNOW GREUZE
From time to time during these years Greuze had painted children’s
heads that gave evidence of the real character of his talent, and in
1765, the year of “La Malédiction paternelle,” he produced “Le Baiser
envoyé,” now in London in the collection of the Baron Alfred de
Rothschild.
“Le Baiser envoyé,” or “The Kiss,” represents a young woman leaning
forward among the flowers of her window-sill to throw a kiss to her
departing lover. The beautiful form, the charming curved face, all
instinctive with tenderness and longing, the grace of the attitude,
the tapering fingers, the arrangement of the framing draperies,
combine to make this one of the most exquisitely graceful of his
pictures, and one that would alone have proved his surpassing talent
for portraying a certain type of woman. No wonder the charmed
beholders turned to ask each other whether this moral painter was not
at his best when his subjects were not moral!
Of course there is nothing immoral about “The Kiss,” only Greuze had
been so praised for his preacher work, it was only natural he should
be criticised when he produced “La Voluptueuse,” as he first called
this picture. Of the appropriateness of the title there can be no
doubt. The lovely kiss-thrower absolutely respires voluptuousness;
moreover, there is hardly a female figure of Greuze, except those
showing very early childhood, that does not suggest this
characteristic. Even when the eyes of his very young girls are candid
and clear with innocence, the pouting lips of the half-opened mouths
are sensuous, the swelling bosom and rounded throat suggestive, the
attitude provoking. In short, the impression given, if wholly
seductive, is invariably complex, troubled, full of a certain delicate
corruption--see “Innocence” or “Fidelity” in the Wallace Collection in
London. “A moralist with a passion for lovely shoulders, a preacher
who wants to see and show the bosoms of young girls,” is how he has
been described.
Not that any one cared. On the contrary, every one, moralists
included, was libertine in the eighteenth century, and “_deshabillé et
désir_” only stamped a painter as being the mirror of his times. So
Greuze’s name took on still more lustre as his rosebuds grew into
roses whose morning dew sparkled beneath the voluptuousness that began
to bow their lovely heads. “Love-Dreams,” “Bacchantes,” “Desire,”
“Flora,” “Volupté”--there is a host of canvases bearing similar
titles; and there are many others with symbolic names showing girls
weeping sentimental griefs over emblematic objects, such as broken
mirrors, dead birds, crushed flowers, broken eggs or jars, a kind of
badinage that was the fashion then.
In a way, he had also great success with his numerous portraits. He
never got beneath the surface, was not psychological enough to express
the soul of his sitter, but the fleshy envelope he reproduced with
skill. The pictures of his friends Pigalle and Sylvestre, and an
excellent one of the engraver Wille, whose prints, advertisements, and
praises did so much to extend the Greuze cult, are well known; and in
the vogue that followed his first success, he received commissions to
paint the Dauphin and other important personages. In spite of its dull
colour, the portrait of the painter Jeaurat, now in the Louvre, is an
interesting piece of work, showing characterisation, the brilliant
eyes giving the impression of a man accustomed to observe closely
and see most things. But naturally Greuze was at his best when he
painted women. Very beautiful is the picture of the Marquise de
Chauvelin, at present in the collection of Baron Alphonse de
Rothschild, and some of his portraits of his wife justly caused a
sensation.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--L’OISEAU MORT
“L’Oiseau Mort,” or “The Dead Bird,” bequeathed by Baron Arthur
de Rothschild to the Louvre, shows one of Greuze’s most
beautiful child-figures, a little girl who has just found her
bird dead. You forget the mannered pose of the hands and arms,
to admire their curves and dimples. The delicacy of the little
grieving face is beyond praise, with the tears starting beneath
the downcast lashes, and a mouth that seems to quiver under the
stir of shadow that plays round it.]
To turn for a moment from the artist to the man, it goes without
saying that one so sensitive to the beauty of woman must have been
susceptible to her influence, and Greuze’s numerous heart-histories
are all the more interesting in that they are as creditable to his
chivalry as they are romantic. His first _grande passion_ was his
boyish love for the wife of his master Grandon at Lyons, a woman with
grown-up daughters. He nursed this adoration in silence, and it was
one of the idol’s daughters who afterwards told how she once surprised
the love-sick youth passionately kissing one of her mother’s shoes he
had found under a table.
Later, when he went to Italy with l’Abbé Gougenot, there was a love
story which in some of its details recalls the “Romeo and Juliet”
legend. The lovely young daughter of the proud Duke for whom he was
copying pictures fell in love with the artist, and declared her
passion. The young man was equally enamoured, but realising the
inequality of their situation he hesitated, and it was only after the
lady pined, fell ill, and had secret meetings arranged by her old
nurse, that he confessed that the love was mutual. A period of madness
followed, the lady making plans to take the money her mother had left
her and elope to Paris, where Greuze was to become a second Raphael;
but his sense of honour triumphed, and to avoid temptation he feigned
an illness which kept him away from the palace. He really did fall ill
at last, but as soon as he was able to be up he fled, fearing to see
the lady again. An agreeable, if unromantic sequel to the history is
a letter he received from the heroine some years later, thanking him
for having behaved as he had done. She was now a contented wife and
the mother of some beautiful children, she said, and she owed all her
happiness to him!
Then there is the story of his devotion to his wife; but unfortunately
that will be told later under a very different heading to that of
“romance.”