Greuze. Childhood Illuminated

This is the first Parisian monographic exhibition ever dedicated to Greuze by a museum, half a century, or almost, after the only French retrospective held in Dijon, following the initial installments in Hartford and San Francisco [1]. The immense interest of this event, presented by the Petit Palais on the occasion of the artist’s tercentenary, is apparent from this fact alone. As with the pioneering Burgundian exhibition under the aegis of the late Edgar Munhall, the curatorship involves an American specialist of the artist: Yuriko Jackall, director of the European Art department at the Detroit Institute of Arts, currently in charge of the extensive catalogue raisonné of paintings and drawings to be published, is associated with Annick Lemoine, director of the Petit Palais, and Mickaël Szanto, lecturer in 18th-century art history at the Sorbonne. This is hardly surprising, given the essential role played by Anglo-Saxon art historians in the resurgence of interest in Greuze during the 1970s and over the past twenty years. French historiography seems rather impoverished in comparison, and one can only welcome the exemplary catalogue published for the occasion, an unprecedented work that relativises certain persistent clichés attached to the artist, less mawkish and melodramatic than audacious and rebellious.

1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)
Une enfant jouant avec un chien
(portrait de Louise-Gabrielle Greuze), 1767
Huile sur toile - 62,9 x 52,7 cm
Angleterre, collection particulière
Photo : Angleterre, collection particulière

See the image in its page

2. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)
La Consolation de la vieillesse, 1769, Plume, encre noire, crayon noir, rehauts à la plume et à l’encre brune,
lavis à l’encre de Chine, 37 × 53,3 cm
Londres, collection particulière
Photo : Londres, collection particulière

See the image in its page

The demonstration proves substantial, as more than a hundred works have been…