tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">The Pictures by which we know Greuze

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS AND FIRST SUCCESS

Few names suggest so much beauty as that of Greuze.

“Greuze”—“a Greuze”—you have only to hear the word and there rises before your mental vision a radiant procession of maidens each lovelier than the last, with the blue of a spring sky in their shining eyes, rosy blood flushing delicate cheeks, soft silken hair escaping in gold-touched curls at temples where the blue veins show, lips like dewy carnations, rounded necks and curving bosoms that suggest all the sweets of June. A veritable “garden of girls” in the first fresh bloom of budding womanhood; and they come to you not so much as painted pictures as delicate visions breathed on canvas from which they might at any moment tremble into pulsing life.

Yet the Greuze to whom we owe this exquisite series was first known as the painter of pictures of a very different kind. Before speaking of these let us begin at the beginning, by seeing when and under what conditions the child who was to become the poet-painter of a certain type of womanhood first saw the world he was destined to enrich.

Born at Tournus, a little town near Macon in France, on August 21, 1725, the early life of Jean Baptiste Greuze curiously resembles in its broad lines those of many other well-known artists. His parents were humble people who lived in the tiny house at Tournus, now decorated with a commemorative plaque; the father an overman slater; and the godparents, who play such an important part in the life of the French child, respectively a slater and a baker. The father seems to have been ambitious, for he resolved to take his son into an evidently expanding business, not as a workman, but as architect. At the usual early age, however, the child’s vocation declared itself. It was in vain the father, alarmed by symptoms that threatened to disarrange his plans, took materials from him and then whipped him for making pictures all over the walls—anywhere, everywhere. The boy cared for nothing but drawing of a kind that did not fall in with the cherished architectural idea, and after many struggles[Pg 13]
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[Pg 16] he won the day by giving his father for a birthday present a pen-and-ink drawing of the head of St. James, well enough done to be at first mistaken for an engraving. This had been copied at nights when he was supposed to be asleep, and touched and convinced, the father finally gave in and sent him off to Lyons to learn the business in the studio of the painter Grandon.

PLATE II.—L’INNOCENCE TENANT DEUX PIGEONS

“L’Innocence tenant deux Pigeons,” or “Innocence holding two Pigeons,” is a typical example of the eyes Greuze never tired of painting, large innocent orbs with a sparkle that suggests the morning sun on flowers wet with dew. The moist half-open lips you also find in most of his girl-heads. The lovely colour scheme is particularly happy even for Greuze. The original is in the Wallace Collection, London.

The term “learn the business” is used advisedly. Grandon’s studio was more a manufactory of pictures than anything else, and was just as bad a school as a young artist could well have. Pictures were copied, recopied, and adapted, turned out for all the world as Jean Baptiste’s godmother turned