600. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), French,

Girl at a Table. Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 32.5 cm.

Palace and Park Museum Complex, Petrodvorets.

 

 

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

(1725 Tournus – 1805 Paris)

 

Greuze is without question one of the most important painters of the French school of the eighteenth century. He possessed a unique asset: he created his own style – sentimental and melodramatic genre scenes. Very early in his career his work was praised by the critics, such as Diderot who talked about “morality in paint”. While L’Accordée de village, where every detail is like an actor playing a part, seems borrowed from some comédie larmoyante or contemporary melodrama, much of Greuze’s later work consisted of titillating pictures of young girls, which contain thinly veiled sexual allusions under their surface appearance of mawkish innocence. The end of the century saw the end of his career as his reception piece was not accepted by the academy in 1769 and a new glorified style was appearing carried out by Jacques-Louis David: Neoclassicism.