outstretched arms of “La Malédiction paternelle,” you see that it is a most faulty and insignificant production. The Academy could not refuse it, but they told him frankly what they thought of it.

“Monsieur,” said the Director, calling him in from the room where he awaited the congratulations of the associates, whose approval he believed he had now fully earned, “the Academy receives you as peintre de genre. It has taken into account your former productions, which are excellent, and has shut its eyes on this one, which is worthy neither of them nor you.”

The disappointment of Greuze, who had counted on the dignity and material advantages conferred by the title of Historical Painter, can be imagined, but amazement and fury dominated. For days he could neither sleep nor eat; and he covered reams of paper in writing to the papers to prove by technical laws and logical arguments that the picture was not only good, but a masterpiece. But for once the adoring public remained unresponsive. The last straw was his friend Diderot’s criticism, published in the usual way.

“The figure of Septime Sévère is ignoble in character. It has the dark, swarthy skin of a convict; its action is uncertain. It is badly drawn, it has the wrist broken; the distance from the neck to the breast-bone is exaggerated. Neither do you see the beginning of the right knee nor where it goes to beneath the covering of the bed. Caracalla is even more ignoble than his father, a wooden figure, without suppleness or movement. Those who force their talent do nothing with grace.”

PLATE VI.—LES DEUX SŒURS

“Les Deux Sœurs,” or “The Two Sisters,” has been until recently in the private collection of Baron Arthur de Rothschild, who bequeathed it to the Louvre, where it now hangs. If it lacks some of the charm of Greuze’s other pictures of girls, it possesses many of his most charming qualities—delicacy of colouring, graceful figures, appealing gesture. The arrangement of the scarves and draperies is essentially “Greuze.”

Having exhausted all other means of protest, Greuze took refuge in the sulkiness of a naughty child, and more or less independent now that he was at last to have the coveted logement in the Louvre, he declared he would never again send a picture to the Academy.

Nor did he, for when, years later, he was obliged to fall back on its aid, the Academy as he had known it was swallowed up in the whirlpool of the Revolution.

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CHAPTER VI
“THE BROKEN PITCHER” AND OTHER WELL-KNOWN PICTURES

To certain temperaments the associations of the Louvre are as interesting as the treasures it actually contains, and many a dreamer wandering through those superb galleries must have tried to reconstitute such scenes as the receptions held by Greuze when, at the height of his fame, he was at last in possession of the logement granted him “for life” by the King in March 1769.

He was now in the prime of life, and the village boy had evolved into a handsome man of middle height, with an impressive personality and air of distinction. One of the two portraits of himself hanging now in the Louvre must have been painted about this period. It shows a fine head, full of energy, both mental and physical, delicate yet strong, very sensitive, the brilliant eyes deeply set, the whole face informed with something akin to, without being genius. The curved mouth is eloquent, and we are told his conversation was sincere, elevated, and animated; but much nervous irritability is indicated, and a physiognomist would point significantly to the exaggerated slope backwards of the otherwise fine forehead, suggesting a lack of that reflectiveness which turns keen perceptions and observation to the best account.

He was always perfectly dressed, his manners were elegant, and it soon grew to be the fashion to visit his studio. He used to show his pictures himself, explaining their beauties, and his extravagant remarks, absorbed as he was in himself and his work, sometimes provided more entertainment than the legitimate raison d’être of the visit. All the talent and beauty of Paris, the greatest nobles, royalties, and distinguished travellers were at one time or another his guests. In a characteristic letter to a friend, Madame Roland describes her visit to see “The Broken Pitcher” we all know so well by reproductions. The original is back in the Louvre now.

After speaking of the lovely colouring, fresh and charming, she says: “She holds the jar she has just broken in her arms, standing near the fountain where the accident has taken place. Her eyelids are low, and the mouth still half-open, as she tries to understand the gravity of her misfortune and does not know whether she is to blame. One can imagine nothing more piquant and pretty; the only reproach the painter merits is that he has not made the little girl sorry enough to no longer feel the temptation to return to the fountain. I said this to Greuze, and we laughed together.” With good-natured malice Madame Roland goes on to relate how when Greuze told her the Emperor Joseph II. had complimented him on the personal quality of his work, saying he was the poet of his pictures, she replied, “It is true one never quite understands how beautiful your pictures are till you describe them.” A remark which Greuze took quite seriously.

The “Danæ,” now in the Louvre, and “L’Offrande à l’Amour,” in the Wallace Collection, are also mentioned in correspondence as having been shown by Greuze in his studio about this time. They are the best examples of his allegorical work—there was no branch of painting he did not attempt—but they are hardly more successful than his moral subjects, and quite lack the charm of his homely, familiar scenes.

Chief among the latter may be mentioned “La paix du Ménage,” a young father and mother clasping each other tenderly as they watch their sleeping child; “La Mère Bien-aimée,” whose pretty head comes out of a crowd of the clambering children, who excited Madame Geoffrin’s ill-received remark; “Le Gouter,” a young mother feeding her two fat little boys with a spoon, while a cat sits on the table watching enviously; “Le Silence,” in which the mother, nursing one child, tells an unhappy older one not to blow his trumpet in case he wakes the babe in the cradle. Greuze was never tired of painting mothers with their little children, and the picturesque interiors in which he places them are perhaps more charming than the figures, showing, as they do, the old-world utensils and objects he had round him in his own childhood. The oddly-shaped cradle which he reproduced so often was that in which he himself had been rocked.

Very celebrated at the time were the companion pictures, “L’Enfant envoyé en Nourrice” and “Le Retour de Nourrice.” The first scene is laid in the quaint courtyard of a little thatched farm, with all the family clustering round the mule on which the foster-mother is to carry away the baby. The composition is charming, with the foster-father arranging the saddle, the grandmother giving a last word of advice to the young nurse, the