the loaves out of her oven; and while the boy learnt the use of colours, and some drawing, he also learnt that facility which is the deadly enemy of art, artifice rather than invention, to copy rather than to create—weaknesses which beset him ever afterwards.

It was natural that, when manhood was arrived at, Greuze should yield to the inevitable law that draws exceptional talent to great centres. When he was about twenty he left Lyons, and with very little capital but his abilities, his blonde beauty, and a large stock of self-satisfaction, he set out gaily to make his fortune in Paris.

The story of the first ten years there is also the conventional one of early artist days, the old tale of stress and struggle, of bitter disappointments alternating with brilliant hopes and small achievements. Young Greuze was too personal and faulty in his work to please the Academy, not strong enough yet to convince any advanced movement there might be, and he divided ten trying years between a little study at the Academy and a great deal of painting the pot-boilers he had learnt to make at Lyons. At last his work attracted the attention and gained for him the friendship of two well-known artists, Sylvestre, and Pigalle, the King’s sculptor, and they were instrumental in his being able to exhibit in the Academy of 1755, when he was thirty years old, the picture which brought him his first success, “Un Père qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants.”

This picture shows the living room of a raftered cottage, with the old father sitting at a table round which are gathered his six sons and daughters. One of his large, horny hands is on the open Bible before him, the other holds the spectacles he has taken off as he stops to explain the passage he has been reading. The children listen respectfully, some attentively, the others with an air of being absorbed in their own reflections, while the mother, sitting near, stops her spinning to tell the baby on the floor not to tease the dog.

It is not well painted. Except that it shows a picturesque interior and expresses the sentiment of piety in the home it is intended to convey, it has but little merit, is, indeed, so mediocre that you wonder why, far from bringing fame to the young man, it should have been noticed at all.

To understand its success, and the still greater success of similar pictures which followed, you must glance at the epoch of its production.

CHAPTER II
THE TIMES IN WHICH GREUZE LIVED

It was that period of the eighteenth century before the Revolution when society was at its worst, the paints and powders that covered its face, the scents which over-perfumed its body, its manners artificial as the antics of marionettes, being emblematic of its state of mind. Society was, in short, so corrupt it could not become any more so, and at length, weary of the search for a new sensation, there was nothing for it but a sudden rebound to some sort of morality.

Opportunist philosophers appeared quickly on the scene, and began to preach the pleasant doctrine that man was born very good, full of honesty and good feeling, running over with generosity and all the virtues, and if he did not keep so, it was because the miserable conventions of society had drawn him from the original perfection of his state. To find virtue you must look among those of humble estate, the poor who thought of nothing but their work and the bringing up of their large families. Away, then, from social life and its corruptions, return to the simple ways of the lowly and needy—thus and thus only could France be regenerated!

The aristocratic victims of their caste drank all this in eagerly, and their exaggerated efforts to follow the new cult of simplicity made the bitter-tongued Voltaire describe them as “mad with the desire to walk on their hands and feet, so as to imitate as nearly as possible their virtuous ancestors of the woods.”

Diderot, whose sudden burning enthusiasms and throbbing eloquence would have carried away his hearers in spite of themselves if they had not been only too eager to listen, was the great apostle of the new doctrine, and, always in extremes, he boldly dragged his moral theories into even the realm of art.

“To render virtue charming and vice odious ought to be the object of every honest man who wields a pen, a paint-brush, or the sculptor’s chisel,” he declared.

The vivid intelligence of Greuze seized the position, and sure of at least attracting attention if nothing else, he set to work to paint some scene which would fall in with the prevalent “debauch of morals,” as some one called it. Thus, “Le Père qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants” appeared at that psychological moment which does so much to ensure success. Further, it came as a refreshing change to a public weary of the pleasant insipidities of Boucher, of a long-continued series of pale pastorals showing the doubtful pleasures of light love. It was, [Pg 23]
[Pg 24]
[Pg 25]moreover, a novelty, for no one had painted such subjects before in France.

PLATE III.—LA MALÉDICTION PATERNELLE

“La Malédiction paternelle,” or “The Father’s Curse,” is in the Louvre, and is one of the best known of Greuze’s moral pictures. It is one of his worst productions. Observe the theatrical attitudes and gestures, the too carefully arranged draperies, etc., of the actors in this exaggerated scene, which in real life would pass in formless disorder and rough confusion.

And so more than the expected happened. From the day of its exhibition till the Salon was closed, it was surrounded by admiring crowds, and every one said, “Who is this wonderful Greuze?” Those there were who replied that Greuze had not painted the picture himself, was incapable of such work, for the overweening personal vanity that marred Greuze’s character had already made for him many enemies; but the happy preacher-painter proved his position, and but gained additional interest from the discussions that raged round him.

From this moment Greuze’s position was assured. He was made agréé of the Academy, which among other privileges gave him the right to exhibit what he liked there in future. He sold the celebrated picture for a comparatively large sum to a Monsieur de la Live de Jully. He made hosts of friends, many of them influential. One of his new acquaintances offered to provide him with a studio. Another, l’Abbé Gougenot, invited him to accompany him to Italy to study art, an offer which was accepted.

Greuze stayed two years in Italy, but except that some of his pictures have Italian names and show Italian costumes, this visit exercised no perceptible influence on his work, and in 1757 he returned to steady work in the Paris which was to be for him the scene of so many triumphs—and later, of so much despair.

CHAPTER III
GREUZE’S MORAL PICTURES

The well-known “Village Bride,” or “L’Accordée du Village,” exhibited in 1761, was his second great success.

“A Father