Paris.“Greuze is among the most important and daring artists of the 18th centurye century “we read, as a preamble to the Petit Palais exhibition. Here lies the whole challenge of an exhibition on Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805): to show the originality of a painter whose technical virtuosity does not need to be proven, but whose work has often been perceived as conventional or even mawkish. “ Greuze is little known in France, perhaps misunderstood. There has never been an exhibition dedicated to him in Paris, but it is here that he met with immense success! We fainted in front of his works, he was adored by the critics of the time…”underlines Annick Lemoine, director of the Petit Palais, who is curating with art historian Yuriko Jackall (painter specialist) and Mickaël Szanto (professor of 18th century art history at the Sorbonne).
An exhibition through the prism of childhood
“The exhibition is monographic since it covers Greuze’s entire long career, but we also wanted to discover or rediscover his work through the prism of a theme: that of childhood,” she adds. The angle is relevant. Throughout his career, the painter portrayed a multitude of children, mischievous or thoughtful, sometimes amused, sometimes frightened. And from this favorite subject, a great creative freedom shines through. His compositions – rarely commissions – are very meaningful, often charged with moral values, which makes the subject of childhood a beautiful gateway to understanding Greuze’s art, his evolution as well as his personal convictions.
Around a hundred paintings, drawings and engravings are presented, including structuring works in his career. Lent by an English private collector, the moving portrait of his youngest daughter, A child playing with a dogis one of his first great successes, very appreciated during its presentation at the Salon of 1769. As for its spectacular composition Septimius Severus reproaching his son Caracalla for wanting to assassinate him (see ill.), on loan from the Louvre, it benefits from an entire room where it is presented alongside several of its studies. Greuze’s rare foray into history painting, the work captures the tension between a father and his teenage son, against a backdrop of ancient history. Its presentation, as a reception piece at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1769, this time ended in a resounding failure. Alongside these major paintings, the exhibition also has the merit of giving pride of place to the artist’s little-known, even unknown, works, as well as numerous preparatory studies. Several paintings and drawings, often from private collections, were not part of the Dijon retrospective of 1976 (the last major exhibition devoted to Greuze) and are presented here for the first time, like a delicate Young girl mourning her dead bird recently reappeared on the market.
Finally, far from showing a uniform production, the Petit Palais clearly highlights the different ways in which Greuze takes on the theme of childhood, he who excels in the rendering of expressions and emotions. The scenography, sober and imagined by Matteo Soyer of the NC agency, invites you to progress to the rhythm of the picture rails: family scenes and intimate portraits stand out against a green then soft purple background, while the transition to dark tones marks the transition to more dramatic scenes, where Greuze confronts innocent young girls with human violence or death. This last part is, in this sense, particularly striking. In The Broken Jug (see ill.), one of his masterpieces, the painter multiplies the significant details: the empty look of the beautiful young girl, the way in which she clutches her lower abdomen, the presence of a split jug and a broken egg are all clues revealing the abuse of which she has just been the victim. Further on, the comparison of the portrait of a bird hunter, an image of the predatory seducer, with his preparatory drawing allows us to grasp the nuances brought by Greuze, who tempers the hardness of his gaze in the final composition.
The other common thread of the course, that of the artist’s life, articulates rather well with the theme of childhood. Greuze was a father himself, had an eventful married life and took part in the great debates that spanned the Age of Enlightenment. “If Greuze is so original, it is also because he echoes, interprets and even defends social debates around childhood. Because it’s in the 18th centurye century that childhood is finally considered as an age in its own right”recalls Annick Lemoine. Through his brush, he questions the use of wet nurses, points out the benefits of breastfeeding, the importance of child education, etc., works pertinently placed in parallel with some writings by philosophers and treatises of his time.
