Greuze, Jean Baptiste

Born Aug. 21, 1725. in Tour-nus, Burgundy: died Mar. 21. 1805, in Paris. French painter.

Between 1745 and 1750, Greuze studied in Lyon under C. Grandon; he then went to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. In 1755–56 he traveled in Italy. His genre compositions (Village Bride, 1761, Louvre, Paris; The Paralytic, or Fruits of a Good Education. 1763, Hermitage, Leningrad) extolled the virtues of the third estate, with the enthusiastic support of D. Diderot. The cult of sensitivity peculiar to sentimentalism led him to endow his heroes with motivations that manifest themselves in exaggerated pathos. Greuze’s idealization of nature created a cloyingly sweet manner (women’s and children’s heads). His sketches and portraits (The Engraver I. G. Ville, 1763, Jacquemart-André Museum, Paris) are more realistic and true to life.