Johann Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was born at Weimar, where his father was court-painter. So precocious was his talent that when only in his eighteenth year he was himself appointed court-painter to Augustus II., King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. In 1743 he went to Italy, and after this visit he turned his name into Italian by signing it Dietrici (as in the picture dated 1745). He was afterwards appointed keeper of the celebrated Gallery at Dresden, a Professor of the Academy there, and Director of the school of painting attached to the porcelain manufactory. His pictures and etchings are numerous. In his original work his style remained German. But he had also a remarkable facility in imitating the works of other painters. "He did more," says Merritt, the picture-restorer, "to confound collectors than all other imitators put together. Hundreds of his imitations of the various masters have been sold to second-rate amateurs for original productions" (_Art Criticism and Romance_, i. 164). 206. THE HEAD OF A GIRL. _Jean Baptiste Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805). To understand the great reputation which Greuze enjoyed in his day one should remember, besides the prettiness of his pictures in themselves, the contrast which they afforded in their subject-matter to the art around them. Look, for instance, at 1090 and 101-104. Those pictures are nearly contemporary with Greuze's, and are typical, the first of the mythology, the latter of the courtliness, and all of the sensuality, of the current art of the time. The return to nature, the return to simpler life and sounder morals, which inspired Rousseau, found expression in Greuze's domestic scenes and sweet girl faces. "Courage, my good Greuze," said Diderot of one of Greuze's pictures of domestic drama; "introduce morality into painting. What, has not the pencil been long enough and too long consecrated to debauchery and vice? Ought we not to be delighted at seeing it at last unite with dramatic poetry in instructing us, correcting us, inviting us to virtue?"[112] Greuze's art, in comparison with what was around it, was thus simple, natural, moral. Yet one sees now that something of the artificiality, against which his pictures were a protest, nevertheless affected them. For instance there is an obvious posing in this picture, just as there is a touch of affectation in 1154. Decidedly, too, Greuze "invests his lessons of bourgeois morality with sensuous attractions." There is neither the innocence nor the unconsciousness in the girls of Greuze that there is in those of Reynolds or Millais.