Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Moralizing genre scenes with Dutch realism
Jean Baptiste Greuze was born in Tournus in 1725, sixth son of a master tiler. Legend has it that the young Greuze convinced his father of his natural aptitude for painting when he showed him a pen-and-ink drawing of Saint James, which his father mistook for an engraving. Greuze was sent to Lyon to study with the commercially successful portrait painter Charles Grandon (1691-1762). Sometime before 1755, Greuze left Lyon for Paris, where he went to pursue his studies at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. After training in Lyon, Jean-Baptiste Greuze arrived in Paris in 1750, where he sporadically attended the Académie Royale. His 1755 Salon debut was a triumph, but the acclamation turned his head. He antagonized everyone, including fellow artists, which later proved disastrous. While retaining the clear, bright colors and lighter attitude of eighteenth-century painting, Greuze introduced a Dutch-influenced realism into French genre painting and portraiture. Through vivid facial expressions and dramatic gestures, Greuze's moralizing paintings exemplified the new idea that painting should relate to life. They captured the details of settings and costumes, "spoke to the heart," educated viewers, and aimed to make them "virtuous." In 1769 Académie members refused Greuze membership as a history painter, accepting him only in the lower category of genre, perhaps partly from ill will. Humiliated, he withdrew from public exhibitions completely. During the 1770s Greuze enjoyed a widespread reputation and engravings after his paintings were widely distributed, but his wife embezzled most of the proceeds. By the 1780s, Neoclassicism curtailed his popularity and his quality declined. After enduring poverty and neglect, he died unnoticed, having outlived his time and his reputation.
Relationship Network
Master student
- Claude Hoin Student
- Marie-Geneviève Bouliard Student
- Pierre Alexandre Wille Student
Fellow student
Influenced by
Artworks by this artist (141 total)
- Head of an Old Woman Looking Up ca. 1763
- Half-Length Portrait of an Old Man
- Head of a Young Boy 176
- Girl’s head with bonnet ca. 1763
- Petit Garçon au gilet rouge 1775
- Aegina Visited by Jupiter ca. 1767-69
- Head of a Young Woman 1780
- Le message d’amour
- Portrait of a Woman 1770s
- Portrait of the Marquis de Saint-Paul c. 1760
- Study of 2 Hands
- Bolognese Peasant Girl with a Distaff 1755
- Portrait Of A Boy In A Black Waistcoat, Turned To The Right
- Psyche c. 1786
- Ariadne c. 1803 - 1804
- Bildnis eines Kindes
- The Guilty and Repentant Daughter early 1770s
- A Boy Asleep On A Table
- Study of a Hand ca. 1760-80
- Claude-Henri Watelet ca 1765