Greuze

Greuze, Jean Baptiste (1725-1805), a great French genre-painter, was born at Tournus. He was taken up by a portrait-painter named Grandon, whom he accompanied to Paris, where he worked at the Academie schools. He was patronised by De Jully, and after many previous successes, exhibited in 1755 his Aveugle Trompe. In 1761 L'Accordee de Village, now in the Louvre, was exhibited, and the year 1765 saw the production of La Bonne Mere, Le Mauvais Fils Puni, and La Malediction Paternelle, the last two of which are in the Louvre. In 1769 he was received by the Academie, but it was intimated at the same time that it was on the ground of his genre pictures only. The result was that Greuze ceased to exhibit. He died in great poverty, caused mainly by his own extravagance. He became acquainted with Diderot through his marriage to the daughter of a bookseller whose shop the philosopher frequented. Greuze owed much to his choice of subjects and to his engravers, notably Massard, for his treatment was generally in a high degree artificial.