GREUZE
30
GREUZE
of 1755, with the Abb6 Gougenot, the celebrated
savant and archipologist. Rome and Florence, how-
ever, do not seem to have exerted any influence on his
art. It is true, he brought back from Naples some
seines de maurs for the exhibition of 1757, but they
were Neapolitan only in costume and name. He soon
returned to his true style, paintings of humble and
bourgeois life, and from that moment there began for
him a wonderful career of success and good fortune.
A strange change was then taking place in the French
mind — a curious variation, so to say, of the moral tem-
perature. Reason, the critical faculty, and the intel-
lect had run riot, and now men felt the need of living
the hfe of the heart. Society, satiated with frivolity
and licentiousness, sought repose in a simple, honest
life. This it was that made Rousseau's "Julie" and
"Emile" so wonderfully popular; it was, in a word,
the great moral and religious crisis of the century; it
could not but exert an influence on art, and it fell to
Greuze to express it in painting. In this, it is true, he
was preceded by an
artist much greater than he, J- B- Simeon Chardin, whose paint- ings the " Ecureuse " (1738), the "Pour- voyeuse ", the "Bene- dicite" (1740) are still masterpieces of the homely family life. Chardin, too. was an excellent draughtsman, and Greuze was much his inferior in this re- spect, just as he falls far short of his pre- cursor's tender kind- lincssand lovable, un- pretentious poetry. For Chardin's charm- ing simplicity Greuze substitutes a host of moral aims and edifying thoughts. The interest of pure sympathy which a painter ought to feel in the model's life was not enough for Greuze, he must mingle with it a strain of anecdote and a concealed les.son. His work is more or less a painted sermon ; he is ever a
Ereacher. In this respect he resembles Hogarth, whom e undoubtedly imitated as Rousseau imitated Rich- ardson. The success of Greuze was therefore one of the innumerable forms of the eighteenth-century anglomania.
.\\\ this conspired to make him, for some years, the most widely known and most celebrated painter in Europe. His art was hailed as the triumph of natural bourgeois virtue over the mythological and immoral painting of Boucher. His work was a pleasing return to reality and life as it is. The "Tricoteuse", "D(5vi- deuse", and "Jeune fille pleurant son oiseau mort ", at the Exhibition of 1759, carried away the public with a new feeling of life, an emotion that unexpectedly arose from the most commonplace scenes. The ".\c- cordee de village", exhibited in 1761, rai.sed popular enthusiasm to the highest pitch. The picture marked an epoch. It had the distinction, hitherto unheard of for a picture, that the scene it presented furnished the subject of a play at the "rom((lie Italienne"; the climax of this play was the betrothal scene, which was reproduced by the actors exactly as it was painted by Greuze. This compliment, in the present writer's opinion, contains a most delicate piece of critici.sm. For the artist's main fault is that he betrays his effort to lecture the public. Nature never presents these ready-made scenes, where the lesson is plainly wTit-
L'.VCCORDKE DE \'lLLAGE
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Louvre, Paris
ten; some artifice is requisite to draw it out. Greuze
is no less conventional than Boucher, while he lacks
his power of description and his brilliant imagination.
Instead of the grand opera, which is saved by its IjtI-
cism, we are disappointed at finding only the comic
opera. The naturel of Greuze is that of "Rose et
Colas", the "D(5serteur" or the "Devin de village".
His paintings all resemble one of Sedaine's little
dramas suddenly stopped in the midst of a perform-
ance.
In addition, his notion of morality is always uncer- tain or equivocal or, rather, he confuses morality and pleasure, which always ruins his best work. The idea, that virtue is pleasure, that the virtuous man is the one who really enjoys himself, that beneficence is to be measured by the intensity of the emotion it causes in him who practises it, all these conceptions of a well- defined epicurism and a philanthropy identified with egotism, are the most commonplace and silly moral platitudes, for which the age of " philosophy " is respon- sible. This coarse sensualism and af- fected sentimental- ism, with which the literature of the day was replete, infected Greuze. Despite the innocent appearance (jf his art, it is quite .•IS reprehensible as that of Biiueher and liis son-in-law Bau- doin. whose charm- ing elegance he does not possess. The eroticism of the eigh- teenth century had changed only in out- ward a ppeara nee. With all its Ijour- geois prudish airs, Greuze's painting is full of lascivious hints and equivocal suggestions. To be convinced of this, one commentaries on the
has only to read Diderot's
"Cruche ca.ssee" or the "Jeune fille qui pleure son oiseau mort ". But this did not impede the success of Greuze or diminish his renown. His paintings, en- graved by Flipart, Massart, Gaillard, and I.evasseur, continued to be most popular, and brought him a fortune. Meanwhile, although it was customary for artists admitted by the .\cademy as associates to present a picture to the Society within six months, ten years had passed, and Greuze had not fulfilled this obligation. Finally, in 1769, he offered his "Septime Severe reprochant a Caracalla d'avoir voulu ra.ssassiner " (Septimus Severus reproaching Caracalla). This painting, which may be seen in the Louvre, met with a very cold reception. Cireuze, who expected it wouki gain him membership in the .Acad- emy as an historical painter, was received only as a painter of genre. I'roud, like all self-taught men, and spoiled, moreover, by his trivunplial career, the artist co\il<l not pardon the .Vcademy for this humiliation, which he attributed to the envy of his fellow-painters. From that time he ceased to work for the exliil)itions and contented himself with displaying his works in bis studio, whither the public continued to go to see them, as they went to see Rou.s.seau in his fifth-floor room in the rue Platriere. Among others, Mme Roland, then Mile Phlipon, visited him twice in 1777.
.\s successful as ever, (ireuze went on to produce some of his most renowned works, the " B(^n(^diction " and the "Malediction paternelle", the "Mort du bon pere de famille" and the "Mort du pere d6natur6".
