When you think of the important place held by Greuze before the Revolution in the art of the eighteenth century, above all, when you reflect on how, being long dead, he still speaks in accents of such beauty, his pictures, valued at vast sums, finding honoured places in the art treasure-houses of the world, it comes almost as a shock to consider how far from being a really great artist he was.

Absence of sincerity is his chief fault. We read he used to talk much and very eloquently about studying Nature, and had at one time a habit of wandering about the streets in search of subjects, that he used even to make sketches and studies on the[Pg 71]
[Pg 72] spot, but once home and at work on the composition of the picture, he evidently gave rein to the libertine imagination we know. In short, if he really Saw, he Interpreted his own way, and that way resulted in his eliminating all the Strength and most of the Truth. In the theatrical moral pictures, for example, it never seems to have occurred to him that each scene that would tell a story is composed of a whole series of emotions and gestures, and that to try to fix on one canvas a situation which of its nature must be mobile and composed of many changes, is to attempt the false as well as the impossible. Further, even taking him as Diderot’s disciple, “a painter who studied with a literary man,” he is grievously at fault, for the idea of life he conveys is that of a melodrama in which vice is invariably punished and virtue rewarded—and life is not thus.

He took liberties with Nature, too, when he supposedly copied his homely, familiar scenes direct from life. His peasant women take on attitudes and smirk as they feed the carefully placed children; no sweeping or labour of any sort seems to soil the hands of the busiest housewife; clinging children never succeed in disarranging the garments or hair of the mothers and nurses. By no stretch of the imagination could you see his milkmaids delivering milk; his servants look like ladies “making believe.” The attitudes of all his dramatis personÆ are always affected, the naÏvetÉ of his girls and children mannered, their pathos conventional. Tears never redden their eyes; no emotion disarranges the kerchief carefully arranged to show more than is necessary of the throat and breast. And the head of a child of twelve is often placed on the throat and bosom of a girl of seventeen.

Except when he touches flesh his colour is rarely good, the scheme too grey, with undecided reds, dull violets, dirty blues, and muddy foundations. The draperies are often badly painted, a fault which he explained by saying he purposely neglected them to give more value to the painting of the flesh.

Then there is his monotony. No painter ever copied himself with more constancy and indefatigability. He has but three or four types, and these he copies and recopies till you never want to see them again. The father is always the same venerable man, much too old to be the father of such young children; the mother does not vary; it is always the same child a size or two smaller or larger, as the case may be. Although he nominally gives to his girls and women a profession by labelling them washerwomen, knitters, philosophers, chesnut-sellers, kitchen wenches, and so forth, they all have the air of being members of one family, and striking likenesses at that. And one and all have the appearance of posing in light opera rather than of playing a part in life. The peasant mothers of large families have that charming coquettishness which is the hall-mark of every female he painted. The picturesque interiors are equally wanting in variety.

It has been urged by Greuze’s admirers that if he had been properly trained, or had at least been spared those early years in Grandon’s picture-manufactory, had been less inclined to listen to flatteries and the advice of Diderot, who praised him for “not making his peasants coarse,” he might have overcome his faults and developed the qualities of a Chardin. The reply to this is that anything touching on genius cannot be held in check or turned from its own full expansion, that it is more than likely that Greuze expressed all he had to say, and himself summed up his own limitations when he said, “Be piquant, if you cannot be true.”

To turn to the much pleasanter theme of his good qualities, Greuze was an innovator. He was the first to go to humble life for inspiration, and he brought into the painting of bourgeois subjects a distinct character till then seen only in historical scenes. He created in France the moral type of painting. On Sundays in the Louvre you still see those who do not understand the beauty of colour, line, and subtler poetry, and find utility the essential condition of all art, lingering admiringly before “La MalÉdiction paternelle” and “Le Fils puni”; and engravings of similar works are still cherished objects in many a home.

Valuable, too, is his quality of being documentary. He admirably interpreted his age with its superficiality running into theatricalness, its affectations of a morality which worshipped languor and voluptuousness under the name of “Innocence.”

Last and best of all, there are the heads by which we know him. Merely clever in all else, Greuze rises above himself when he approaches these. Nothing could be fresher or more lightly touched than the little blonde heads of his children, the fresh rose of their cheeks, the features suggested under the baby fat, the delicacy of the little unformed members set down with a tenderness that mocks at the limitations of pigments. The same rare quality of livingness animates the older heads. The eyes of the young girls have depth and flame, or their dewy sparkle is subdued in seductive languor. The face almost seems to tremble with emotion while a gleaming tear, a big wet drop, escapes from beneath the heavy lids. The nostrils quiver, the breath comes from between the half-opened mouth, the full lips seem to be making a movement forward. The white flesh is soft and warm, and rich life pulses delicately under the gauze-veiled bosom.

In short, mediocre in all other branches of painting, and affected and faulty at his best, in this exquisite series Greuze not only proves that he possessed a very personal and poetic vision of his own, but that he had a glint of that “divine spark” which sets technique at naught, and results in the instinctive work of the inspired artist.

The plates are printed by Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., Derby and London
The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh