Jean-Baptiste Greuze (born August 21, 1725 – died March 21, 1805) is a French artist of the second half of the 18th century, who became the most prominent representative of sentimentalism in painting. The work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze is aimed at educating morals and glorifying family virtues. In the paintings of this author, the traditions of Rococo and Dutch realism are mixed. Most often, he painted everyday scenes and portraits of young girls full of hidden sensuality, less often he turned to the historical genre.

Biography of Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Jean-Baptiste Greuze was born in the small Burgundian town of Tournus on August 21, 1725. He was the sixth child in a roofer’s family and showed a talent for drawing from childhood. The father was against this hobby and wanted his son to make a career in trade. Charles Grandon, the boy’s first teacher in the field of painting, helped to convince him. Together with him, the young artist leaves for Paris and in 1750 enters the Royal Academy of Arts. Five years later, he was accepted as a candidate for academician.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze had already achieved success in the domestic genre by the time he completed his studies. But he wanted to succeed in a more honorable historical. To do this, he trained for a year in Rome, but made little progress and continued to create family scenes glorifying morality. When the “academic” work “North and Caracalla” was finally written, critics greeted her coldly. After the exhibition, the director of the Academy advised the author to return to instructive genre stories, which are much better for him. The artist, however, was outraged and stopped exhibiting at the Paris Salon.

Artist’s personal life

After 1767, the painter exhibited paintings in his own studio and gained numerous admiring admirers. To maintain prosperity, he often painted portraits to order. Modern viewers appreciate Greuze precisely as a portrait painter, who is perfectly able to convey the individual features of models. Among the master’s customers were many representatives of the nobility, including Russian nobles. He enjoyed the patronage of the Marquise de Pompadour and even Catherine II.

In 1759, the artist married the daughter of a bookseller, Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, but the marriage was extremely unsuccessful. The wife had affairs with her husband’s students and sitters, and also spent huge amounts of his money. All this led to a divorce in 1793, after which the painter became bankrupt. He was no longer able to improve things: in the wake of revolutionary events, public tastes changed, and moralizing-sentimental stories went out of fashion.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze died in poverty on March 4, 1805 and remained forgotten until the second half of the 20th century. Now his works are exhibited in the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other best collections in the world. Another legacy of the artist is his students, among whom there were many women. These are Constance Mayer, Genevieve Brossard de Beaulieu and the painter’s own daughter, Anna Genevieve.