“THE BROKEN PITCHER” AND OTHER WELL-KNOWN PICTURES
To certain temperaments the associations of the Louvre are as
interesting as the treasures it actually contains, and many a dreamer
wandering through those superb galleries must have tried to
reconstitute such scenes as the receptions held by Greuze when, at the
height of his fame, he was at last in possession of the _logement_
granted him “for life” by the King in March 1769.
He was now in the prime of life, and the village boy had evolved into
a handsome man of middle height, with an impressive personality and
air of distinction. One of the two portraits of himself hanging now
in the Louvre must have been painted about this period. It shows a
fine head, full of energy, both mental and physical, delicate yet
strong, very sensitive, the brilliant eyes deeply set, the whole face
informed with something akin to, without being genius. The curved
mouth is eloquent, and we are told his conversation was sincere,
elevated, and animated; but much nervous irritability is indicated,
and a physiognomist would point significantly to the exaggerated slope
backwards of the otherwise fine forehead, suggesting a lack of that
reflectiveness which turns keen perceptions and observation to the
best account.
He was always perfectly dressed, his manners were elegant, and it soon
grew to be the fashion to visit his studio. He used to show his
pictures himself, explaining their beauties, and his extravagant
remarks, absorbed as he was in himself and his work, sometimes
provided more entertainment than the legitimate _raison d’être_ of the
visit. All the talent and beauty of Paris, the greatest nobles,
royalties, and distinguished travellers were at one time or another
his guests. In a characteristic letter to a friend, Madame Roland
describes her visit to see “The Broken Pitcher” we all know so well by
reproductions. The original is back in the Louvre now.
After speaking of the lovely colouring, fresh and charming, she says:
“She holds the jar she has just broken in her arms, standing near the
fountain where the accident has taken place. Her eyelids are low, and
the mouth still half-open, as she tries to understand the gravity of
her misfortune and does not know whether she is to blame. One can
imagine nothing more piquant and pretty; the only reproach the painter
merits is that he has not made the little girl sorry enough to no
longer feel the temptation to return to the fountain. I said this to
Greuze, and we laughed together.” With good-natured malice Madame
Roland goes on to relate how when Greuze told her the Emperor Joseph
II. had complimented him on the personal quality of his work, saying
he was the poet of his pictures, she replied, “It is true one never
quite understands how beautiful your pictures are till you describe
them.” A remark which Greuze took quite seriously.
The “Danæ,” now in the Louvre, and “L’Offrande à l’Amour,” in the
Wallace Collection, are also mentioned in correspondence as having
been shown by Greuze in his studio about this time. They are the best
examples of his allegorical work--there was no branch of painting he
did not attempt--but they are hardly more successful than his moral
subjects, and quite lack the charm of his homely, familiar scenes.
Chief among the latter may be mentioned “La paix du Ménage,” a young
father and mother clasping each other tenderly as they watch their
sleeping child; “La Mère Bien-aimée,” whose pretty head comes out of
a crowd of the clambering children, who excited Madame Geoffrin’s
ill-received remark; “Le Gouter,” a young mother feeding her two fat
little boys with a spoon, while a cat sits on the table watching
enviously; “Le Silence,” in which the mother, nursing one child, tells
an unhappy older one not to blow his trumpet in case he wakes the babe
in the cradle. Greuze was never tired of painting mothers with their
little children, and the picturesque interiors in which he places them
are perhaps more charming than the figures, showing, as they do, the
old-world utensils and objects he had round him in his own childhood.
The oddly-shaped cradle which he reproduced so often was that in
which he himself had been rocked.
Very celebrated at the time were the companion pictures, “L’Enfant
envoyé en Nourrice” and “Le Retour de Nourrice.” The first scene is
laid in the quaint courtyard of a little thatched farm, with all the
family clustering round the mule on which the foster-mother is to
carry away the baby. The composition is charming, with the
foster-father arranging the saddle, the grandmother giving a last word
of advice to the young nurse, the two little children afraid of the
strange dog, and the mother giving a last kiss to the baby she would
give much not to have to part with. The return of the baby, now a
sturdy child on his feet, is set in the interior, where the little
hero of the occasion struggles away from his eager mother and the
brother who strives to amuse him, to return to the foster-mother.
These are the least affected of all the subject-pictures. With the
exception of the foster-father, who stands in the second one with a
cradle on his back and his eyes piously uplifted to the rafters, all
the actors seem absorbed in what they are doing, and this sincerity
accentuates the grace and sentiment which always informs Greuze’s
work.
Engravings of all these canvases, of all his work, were sent out in
their thousands. He was well known in Germany and other countries, and
his name was almost as familiar in the bourgeois homes of provincial
France as in Paris.
Seeing him at this period of his career, the pet of princes, and
earning vast sums of money, it is difficult to realise Greuze could
ever have fallen on evil days, have come to actual want. Yet so it was
to be.
The visit of the Emperor Joseph II. referred to by Madame Roland, and
followed by a command for a picture, a present of 4000 ducats, and
the conferring of the title of baron on the painter, was the
high-water mark in his career. And the tide of success was not only to
turn, but to recede with tragic rapidity.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--LA CRUCHE CASSÉE
“La Cruche Cassée,” or “The Broken Pitcher,” is too well known
in every form of reproduction to need description. It hangs in
the Louvre, and is always surrounded by eager copyists, who
strive, very frequently in vain, to reproduce the delicate tints
of the flesh and the vague, wondering expression in the eyes of
the charming heroine.]