To certain temperaments the associations of the Louvre are as interesting as the treasures it actually contains, and many a dreamer wandering through those superb galleries must have tried to reconstitute such scenes as the receptions held by Greuze when, at the height of his fame, he was at last in possession of the logement granted him “for life” by the King in March 1769.

He was now in the prime of life, and the village boy had evolved into a handsome man of middle height, with an impressive personality and air of distinction. One of the two portraits of himself hanging now in the Louvre must have been painted about this period. It shows a fine head, full of energy, both mental and physical, delicate yet strong, very sensitive, the brilliant eyes deeply set, the whole face informed with something akin to, without being genius. The curved mouth is eloquent, and we are told his conversation was sincere, elevated, and animated; but much nervous irritability is indicated, and a physiognomist would point significantly to the exaggerated slope backwards of the otherwise fine forehead, suggesting a lack of that reflectiveness which turns keen perceptions and observation to the best account.

He was always perfectly dressed, his manners were elegant, and it soon grew to be the fashion to visit his studio. He used to show his pictures himself, explaining their beauties, and his extravagant remarks, absorbed as he was in himself and his work, sometimes provided more entertainment than the legitimate raison d’Être of the visit. All the talent and beauty of Paris, the greatest nobles, royalties, and distinguished travellers were at one time or another his guests. In a characteristic letter to a friend, Madame Roland describes her visit to see “The Broken Pitcher” we all know so well by reproductions. The original is back in the Louvre now.

After speaking of the lovely colouring, fresh and charming, she says: “She holds the jar she has just broken in her arms, standing near the fountain where the accident has taken place. Her eyelids are low, and the mouth still half-open, as she tries to understand the gravity of her misfortune and does not know whether she is to blame. One can imagine nothing more piquant and pretty; the only reproach the painter merits is that he has not made the little girl sorry enough to no longer feel the temptation to return to the fountain. I said this to Greuze, and we laughed together.” With good-natured malice Madame Roland goes on to relate how when Greuze told her the Emperor Joseph II. had complimented him on the personal quality of his work, saying he was the poet of his pictures, she replied, “It is true one never quite understands how beautiful your pictures are till you describe them.” A remark which Greuze took quite seriously.

The “DanÆ,” now in the Louvre, and “L’Offrande À l’Amour,” in the Wallace Collection, are also mentioned in correspondence as having been shown by Greuze in his studio about this time. They are the best examples of his allegorical work—there was no branch of painting he did not attempt—but they are hardly more successful than his moral subjects, and quite lack the charm of his homely, familiar scenes.

Chief among the latter may be mentioned “La paix du MÉnage,” a young father and mother clasping each other tenderly as they watch their sleeping child; “La MÈre Bien-aimÉe,” whose pretty head comes out of a crowd of the clambering children, who excited Madame Geoffrin’s ill-received remark; “Le Gouter,” a young mother feeding her two fat little boys with a spoon, while a cat sits on the table watching enviously; “Le Silence,” in which the mother, nursing one child, tells an unhappy older one not to blow his trumpet in case he wakes the babe in the cradle. Greuze was never tired of painting mothers with their little children, and the picturesque interiors in which he places them are perhaps more charming than the figures, showing, as they do, the old-world utensils and objects he had round him in his own childhood. The oddly-shaped cradle which he reproduced so often was that in which he himself had been rocked.

Very celebrated at the time were the companion pictures, “L’Enfant envoyÉ en Nourrice” and “Le Retour de Nourrice.” The first scene is laid in the quaint courtyard of a little thatched farm, with all the family clustering round the mule on which the foster-mother is to carry away the baby. The composition is charming, with the foster-father arranging the saddle, the grandmother giving a last word of advice to the young nurse, the two little children afraid of the strange dog, and the mother giving a last kiss to the baby she would give much not to have to part with. The return of the baby, now a sturdy child on his feet, is set in the interior, where the little hero of the occasion struggles away from his eager mother and the brother who strives to amuse him, to return to the foster-mother. These are the least affected of all the subject-pictures. With the exception of the foster-father, who stands in the second one with a cradle on his back and his eyes piously uplifted to the rafters, all the actors seem absorbed in what they are doing, and this sincerity accentuates the grace and sentiment which always informs Greuze’s work.

Engravings of all these canvases, of all his work, were sent out in their thousands. He was well known in Germany and other countries, and his name was almost as familiar in the bourgeois homes of provincial France as in Paris.

Seeing him at this period of his career, the pet of princes, and earning vast sums of money, it is difficult to realise Greuze could ever have fallen on evil days, have come to actual want. Yet so it was to be.

The visit of the Emperor Joseph II. referred to by Madame Roland, and followed by a command for a picture, a present of 4000 ducats, and the conferring of the title of baron on the painter, was the high-water mark in his career. And the tide of success was not only to turn, but to recede with tragic rapidity.

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PLATE VII.—LA CRUCHE CASSÉE

“La Cruche CassÉe,” or “The Broken Pitcher,” is too well known in every form of reproduction to need description. It hangs in the Louvre, and is always surrounded by eager copyists, who strive, very frequently in vain, to reproduce the delicate tints of the flesh and the vague, wondering expression in the eyes of the charming heroine.