Greuze.

by Alys Eyre Macklin.

CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS AND FIRST SUCCESS

Few names suggest so much beauty as that of Greuze.

"Greuze"--"a Greuze"--you have only to hear the word and there rises before your mental vision a radiant procession of maidens each lovelier than the last, with the blue of a spring sky in their shining eyes, rosy blood flushing delicate cheeks, soft silken hair escaping in gold-touched curls at temples where the blue veins show, lips like dewy carnations, rounded necks and curving bosoms that suggest all the sweets of June. A veritable "garden of girls" in the first fresh bloom of budding womanhood; and they come to you not so much as painted pictures as delicate visions breathed on canvas from which they might at any moment tremble into pulsing life.

Yet the Greuze to whom we owe this exquisite series was first known as the painter of pictures of a very different kind. Before speaking of these let us begin at the beginning, by seeing when and under what conditions the child who was to become the poet-painter of a certain type of womanhood first saw the world he was destined to enrich.

Born at Tournus, a little town near Macon in France, on August 21, 1725, the early life of Jean Baptiste Greuze curiously resembles in its broad lines those of many other well-known artists. His parents were humble people who lived in the tiny house at Tournus, now decorated with a commemorative plaque; the father an overman slater; and the G.o.dparents, who play such an important part in the life of the French child, respectively a slater and a baker. The father seems to have been ambitious, for he resolved to take his son into an evidently expanding business, not as a workman, but as architect. At the usual early age, however, the child's vocation declared itself. It was in vain the father, alarmed by symptoms that threatened to disarrange his plans, took materials from him and then whipped him for making pictures all over the walls--anywhere, everywhere. The boy cared for nothing but drawing of a kind that did not fall in with the cherished architectural idea, and after many struggles he won the day by giving his father for a birthday present a pen-and-ink drawing of the head of St. James, well enough done to be at first mistaken for an engraving.

This had been copied at nights when he was supposed to be asleep, and touched and convinced, the father finally gave in and sent him off to Lyons to learn the business in the studio of the painter Grandon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE II.--L'INNOCENCE TENANT DEUX PIGEONS

"L'Innocence tenant deux Pigeons," or "Innocence holding two Pigeons," is a typical example of the eyes Greuze never tired of painting, large innocent orbs with a sparkle that suggests the morning sun on flowers wet with dew. The moist half-open lips you also find in most of his girl-heads. The lovely colour scheme is particularly happy even for Greuze. The original is in the Wallace Collection, London.]

The term "learn the business" is used advisedly. Grandon's studio was more a manufactory of pictures than anything else, and was just as bad a school as a young artist could well have. Pictures were copied, recopied, and adapted, turned out for all the world as Jean Baptiste's G.o.dmother turned the loaves out of her oven; and while the boy learnt the use of colours, and some drawing, he also learnt that facility which is the deadly enemy of art, artifice rather than invention, to copy rather than to create--weaknesses which beset him ever afterwards.

It was natural that, when manhood was arrived at, Greuze should yield to the inevitable law that draws exceptional talent to great centres.

When he was about twenty he left Lyons, and with very little capital but his abilities, his blonde beauty, and a large stock of self-satisfaction, he set out gaily to make his fortune in Paris.

The story of the first ten years there is also the conventional one of early artist days, the old tale of stress and struggle, of bitter disappointments alternating with brilliant hopes and small achievements. Young Greuze was too personal and faulty in his work to please the Academy, not strong enough yet to convince any advanced movement there might be, and he divided ten trying years between a little study at the Academy and a great deal of painting the pot-boilers he had learnt to make at Lyons. At last his work attracted the attention and gained for him the friendship of two well-known artists, Sylvestre, and Pigalle, the King's sculptor, and they were instrumental in his being able to exhibit in the Academy of 1755, when he was thirty years old, the picture which brought him his first success, "Un Pere qui lit la Bible a ses Enfants."

This picture shows the living room of a raftered cottage, with the old father sitting at a table round which are gathered his six sons and daughters. One of his large, h.o.r.n.y hands is on the open Bible before him, the other holds the spectacles he has taken off as he stops to explain the pa.s.sage he has been reading. The children listen respectfully, some attentively, the others with an air of being absorbed in their own reflections, while the mother, sitting near, stops her spinning to tell the baby on the floor not to tease the dog.

It is not well painted. Except that it shows a picturesque interior and expresses the sentiment of piety in the home it is intended to convey, it has but little merit, is, indeed, so mediocre that you wonder why, far from bringing fame to the young man, it should have been noticed at all.

To understand its success, and the still greater success of similar pictures which followed, you must glance at the epoch of its production.

CHAPTER II

THE TIMES IN WHICH GREUZE LIVED

It was that period of the eighteenth century before the Revolution when society was at its worst, the paints and powders that covered its face, the scents which over-perfumed its body, its manners artificial as the antics of marionettes, being emblematic of its state of mind.

Society was, in short, so corrupt it could not become any more so, and at length, weary of the search for a new sensation, there was nothing for it but a sudden rebound to some sort of morality.

Opportunist philosophers appeared quickly on the scene, and began to preach the pleasant doctrine that man was born very good, full of honesty and good feeling, running over with generosity and all the virtues, and if he did not keep so, it was because the miserable conventions of society had drawn him from the original perfection of his state. To find virtue you must look among those of humble estate, the poor who thought of nothing but their work and the bringing up of their large families. Away, then, from social life and its corruptions, return to the simple ways of the lowly and needy--thus and thus only could France be regenerated!

The aristocratic victims of their caste drank all this in eagerly, and their exaggerated efforts to follow the new cult of simplicity made the bitter-tongued Voltaire describe them as "mad with the desire to walk on their hands and feet, so as to imitate as nearly as possible their virtuous ancestors of the woods."

Diderot, whose sudden burning enthusiasms and throbbing eloquence would have carried away his hearers in spite of themselves if they had not been only too eager to listen, was the great apostle of the new doctrine, and, always in extremes, he boldly dragged his moral theories into even the realm of art.

"To render virtue charming and vice odious ought to be the object of every honest man who wields a pen, a paint-brush, or the sculptor's chisel," he declared.

The vivid intelligence of Greuze seized the position, and sure of at least attracting attention if nothing else, he set to work to paint some scene which would fall in with the prevalent "debauch of morals,"

as some one called it. Thus, "Le Pere qui lit la Bible a ses Enfants"

appeared at that psychological moment which does so much to ensure success. Further, it came as a refreshing change to a public weary of the pleasant insipidities of Boucher, of a long-continued series of pale pastorals showing the doubtful pleasures of light love. It was, moreover, a novelty, for no one had painted such subjects before in France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE III.--LA MALeDICTION PATERNELLE

"La Malediction paternelle," or "The Father's Curse," is in the Louvre, and is one of the best known of Greuze's moral pictures.

It is one of his worst productions. Observe the theatrical att.i.tudes and gestures, the too carefully arranged draperies, etc., of the actors in this exaggerated scene, which in real life would pa.s.s in formless disorder and rough confusion.]

And so more than the expected happened. From the day of its exhibition till the Salon was closed, it was surrounded by admiring crowds, and every one said, "Who is this wonderful Greuze?" Those there were who replied that Greuze had not painted the picture himself, was incapable of such work, for the overweening personal vanity that marred Greuze's character had already made for him many enemies; but the happy preacher-painter proved his position, and but gained additional interest from the discussions that raged round him.

From this moment Greuze's position was a.s.sured. He was made _agree_ of the Academy, which among other privileges gave him the right to exhibit what he liked there in future. He sold the celebrated picture for a comparatively large sum to a Monsieur de la Live de Jully. He made hosts of friends, many of them influential. One of his new acquaintances offered to provide him with a studio. Another, l'Abbe Gougenot, invited him to accompany him to Italy to study art, an offer which was accepted.

Greuze stayed two years in Italy, but except that some of his pictures have Italian names and show Italian costumes, this visit exercised no perceptible influence on his work, and in 1757 he returned to steady work in the Paris which was to be for him the scene of so many triumphs--and later, of so much despair.

CHAPTER III

GREUZE'S MORAL PICTURES

The well-known "Village Bride," or "L'Accordee du Village," exhibited in 1761, was his second great success.

"A Father handing over the Marriage-portion of his Daughter" was the first t.i.tle of this picture, and one which better, if less poetically, explains the scene. The homely ceremony takes place in the picturesque living room of a big cottage or small farm, and twelve people take part in it. Backed up by the village functionary, who has drawn up the contract, the old father is evidently giving some good advice as he places the bag of money in the hands of his future son-in-law. The young man listens respectfully, the shy but proud young bride hanging on to his arm. The mother has taken one of her daughter's hands, while a younger sister leans her head on the bride's shoulder.

Children play about in various att.i.tudes among a family of fowls who feed in the foreground. Though it has some of the faults of those which followed it, this is undoubtedly the best subject-picture painted by Greuze. The composition is good, it is well drawn, full of a charming tender sentiment, and the head of the fiancee, foreshadowing Greuze's future successes, is delicious, fully deserving Gautier's eulogy: "It is impossible to find anything younger, fresher, more innocent, and more coquettishly virginal, if the two words may be connected, than this head."

Preaching the beauty of family life, the sacredness of marriage, and the virtues and happiness of the humble, "L'Accordee du Village"

raised a furore. Its material success was equally great. It was sold for 9000 livres, and later, in 1780, it was bought for the Cabinet du Roi for 16,650 livres.

Very much less successful from the artistic point of view were the two well-known pictures now in the Louvre, which appeared three or four years later, "La Malediction paternelle" and--a sequel--"Le Fils puni."

The first shows the vicious and debauched son trying to tear himself from the grasp of an agonised mother and little brother, to go away with the colour-sergeant who is waiting near the door. While the mother pleads, the father, unable to move from the chair in which illness holds him, storms, and with hands violently outstretched, p.r.o.nounces the curse that terrifies the other shuddering members of the family.

The punishment is shown in the second picture, when the repentant son, shabby and travel-stained, returns to find his father dead. His stick fallen from his trembling hands, his knees giving way beneath him, one hand on his heart, the other pressed convulsively to his forehead, he stands helpless at the foot of the bed on which the dead man lies.

Beside him stands his mother, pointing tragically to the corpse, with an air of saying, "Behold your work!" The other members of the family are too occupied with their own sorrow to notice him, and give way to their despair in various att.i.tudes.

The artificiality of pose and gesture more than suggested in "L'Accordee du Village" is here exaggerated into cheap theatricalness.

In "Le Fils puni," for example, the att.i.tude of the Prodigal, and the Lady Macbeth pose of the cla.s.sically-draped mother, are impossible, and the outstretched arms, the heaven-turned eyes, and open mouths of the others are almost offensive. This exaggeration defeats its own object. You feel that these dramatis personae are only posing, tableau-vivant fashion, to impress, and they do not do it well enough to excite anything but criticism in you. The colour is bad, heavy, and dull. The draperies hang in stiff folds, without suppleness.

These two canvases are arrangements, not pictures; and in spite of certain gracious qualities which always charm in Greuze, all the others of the long series that followed can be dismissed with the same criticism.

Such was not the opinion of Diderot, the painter's most admiring critic and friend. He could not find words in which to adequately praise productions that proved such "great qualities of the heart, and such good morals."