[Frontispiece: INNOCENCE.] Bell's Miniature Series of Painters GREUZE BY HAROLD ARMITAGE LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1902 {v} PREFACE Although Paris, during the eighteenth century, became the home of artists of more subtle genius than Greuze, yet the pictures of no other painter of that alluring period have become so familiar to the people of our own country. Engravings, etchings, photographs, and reproductions in colour of the works of Greuze abound on every hand; but many have admired the art who have not known so much as the name of the artist, and more have known his name, and have still been far from any knowledge of the story of his life. Indeed, though brief narrations of what Greuze did and suffered in this world have appeared in volumes that have contained also the biographies of other artists, no book, in this country, has been devoted solely to an account of his romantic career. Moreover, the addition of twenty-one of the works of Greuze to the possessions of the British nation by the bequest of the Wallace Collection, and the exhibition of nine more at the Art Gallery of the Corporation of London in 1902, must have awakened curiosity concerning a painter whose peculiar place in the evolution of art in France, {vi} whose character, and whose eventful life, make his history interesting alike to those who delight in pictures and to those who read biography for its own sake. The author hopes that this volume will make more available than it has hitherto been an account of the principal happenings in the story of an artist with whose charming pictures the world has been for many years so intimately acquainted. {vii} TABLE OF CONTENTS Early Years Fame in Paris Poverty and Death Romance and Tragedy Personal Characteristics Characteristics of his Work Position in French Art Our Illustrations The Chief Works of Greuze {viii} LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Innocence ... Frontispiece The Village Bride (L'Accordée de Village) The Pretty Laundress (La Belle Blanchisseuse) The Listening Girl The Kiss (Le Baiser Jeté) Portrait of Robespierre The Broken Pitcher (La Cruche Cassée) The Milkmaid (La Laitière) {1} LIFE OF GREUZE EARLY YEARS The way of life in which Jean Baptiste Greuze spent his childhood and his youth was not different from that of most other artists. His parents were obscure people, who had no riches; and his father opposed his desire to be a painter. For many years, even his own countrymen who wrote of Greuze, gave the date of his birth any time between 1725 and 1732; but it is known now that the accurate date is August 21, 1725, the one which has since been inscribed on the modest house in Tournus, near Mâcon, where his father and mother were living when the artist was born.