more lustre as his rosebuds grew into roses whose morning dew sparkled beneath the voluptuousness that began to bow their lovely heads. “Love-Dreams,” “Bacchantes,” “Desire,” “Flora,” “Volupté”—there is a host of canvases bearing similar titles; and there are many others with symbolic names showing girls weeping sentimental griefs over emblematic objects, such as broken mirrors, dead birds, crushed flowers, broken eggs or jars, a kind of badinage that was the fashion then.

In a way, he had also great success with his numerous portraits. He never got beneath the surface, was not psychological enough to express the soul of his sitter, but the fleshy envelope he reproduced with skill. The pictures of his friends Pigalle and Sylvestre, and an excellent one of the engraver Wille, whose prints, advertisements, and praises did so much to extend the Greuze cult, are well known; and in the vogue that followed his first success, he received commissions to paint the Dauphin and other important personages. In spite of its dull colour, the portrait of the painter Jeaurat, now in the Louvre, is an interesting piece of work, showing characterisation, the brilliant eyes giving the impression of a man [Pg 39]
[Pg 40]
[Pg 41]accustomed to observe closely and see most things. But naturally Greuze was at his best when he painted women. Very beautiful is the picture of the Marquise de Chauvelin, at present in the collection of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, and some of his portraits of his wife justly caused a sensation.

PLATE V.—L’OISEAU MORT

“L’Oiseau Mort,” or “The Dead Bird,” bequeathed by Baron Arthur de Rothschild to the Louvre, shows one of Greuze’s most beautiful child-figures, a little girl who has just found her bird dead. You forget the mannered pose of the hands and arms, to admire their curves and dimples. The delicacy of the little grieving face is beyond praise, with the tears starting beneath the downcast lashes, and a mouth that seems to quiver under the stir of shadow that plays round it.

To turn for a moment from the artist to the man, it goes without saying that one so sensitive to the beauty of woman must have been susceptible to her influence, and Greuze’s numerous heart-histories are all the more interesting in that they are as creditable to his chivalry as they are romantic. His first grande passion was his boyish love for the wife of his master Grandon at Lyons, a woman with grown-up daughters. He nursed this adoration in silence, and it was one of the idol’s daughters who afterwards told how she once surprised the love-sick youth passionately kissing one of her mother’s shoes he had found under a table.

Later, when he went to Italy with l’Abbé Gougenot, there was a love story which in some of its details recalls the “Romeo and Juliet” legend. The lovely young daughter of the proud Duke for whom he was copying pictures fell in love with the artist, and declared her passion. The young man was equally enamoured, but realising the inequality of their situation he hesitated, and it was only after the lady pined, fell ill, and had secret meetings arranged by her old nurse, that he confessed that the love was mutual. A period of madness followed, the lady making plans to take the money her mother had left her and elope to Paris, where Greuze was to become a second Raphael; but his sense of honour triumphed, and to avoid temptation he feigned an illness which kept him away from the palace. He really did fall ill at last, but as soon as he was able to be up he fled, fearing to see the lady again. An agreeable, if unromantic sequel to the history is a letter he received from the heroine some years later, thanking him for having behaved as he had done. She was now a contented wife and the mother of some beautiful children, she said, and she owed all her happiness to him!

Then there is the story of his devotion to his wife; but unfortunately that will be told later under a very different heading to that of “romance.”

CHAPTER V
THE VANITY OF GREUZE

Mention has already been made of the overweening vanity which was Greuze’s most pronounced personal characteristic. He had, above all, the highest possible opinion of his own talent, and could not brook the slightest adverse criticism of his work.

Even when he first came to Paris and had not proved his abilities, he made enemies by stupid remarks like his reply to Natoire, who had suggested some alteration in a detail of one of his pictures. “Monsieur, you would be only too happy if you were able to do anything so good yourself.” Later, when success had come and he was surrounded by admirers, the desire for praise became a mania, and he fell into a violent passion if any one made a remark that suggested anything but flattery. A great friend of his, and one of his patrons, a Madame Geoffrin, at whose house he had met many of his most influential friends and kindest critics, said laughingly, and with truth, that there was a “véritable fricassée d’enfants” in “La Mère Bien-aimée.” Some one repeated this to Greuze.

“How dare she venture to criticise a work of art,” he cried violently. “Let her tremble with fear lest I immortalise her by painting her as a schoolmistress, with a whip in her hand and a face that will terrify all children living or to be born.”

Under the influence of his infatuation for himself, he lost all sense of the proportion of things—witness the scene when the Dauphin, delighted with his own portrait, asked him to begin one of the Dauphine. The presence of the lady did not prevent Greuze, ordinarily well-mannered, and particularly so to women, from replying shortly that he did not know how to paint heads of the kind, making reference to the paint and powder all society women wore at the time. Small wonder that thereafter royal favours were scarce, and he had to wait several years longer than was necessary for the logement in the Louvre to which his position entitled him.

This same trait played a prominent part in his historic quarrel with the Academy over his diploma picture. It was the rule for every member to present to the Academy on his election some representative work, but Greuze, satisfied that the honour was theirs, and that he was in a position to form his own precedent, let years go by without offering the expected chef d’œuvre. It was only when the delay had lasted fourteen years, and they wrote saying they would be obliged to forbid him to show his pictures in the Salon unless he fulfilled his obligation, that he conceded to the rule, and having replied by a letter that was “a model of pride and impertinence,” set to work on the picture.

Believing he could do any form of subject equally well, he chose a grandiloquent historical subject, a style absolutely unsuited to his limitations. “Septime Sévère reprochant à son fils Caracalla d’avoir attenté à sa vie dans les défilés d’Écosse, et lui disant, Si tu désires ma mort, ordonne à Papinien de me la donner” was its title; and if you look at it where it hangs skied in the Louvre above the violently