Art Blogging: Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was a French Rococo painter and draftsman. He was born in Burgundy and educated in Lyon and Paris. Greuze was admitted into the Academy in 1755. After traveling to Italy in that year, he had an affair with the Italian Rococo style, before returning to the French flavor of Rococo painting and drawing. He was commercially successful and acquired great wealth until the Revolution, and died in poverty in 1805.

This painting is his self-portrait.


Thank God that Greuze went to Italy. Here you see the precision of Italian painting that would not become dominant in the French tradition for several decades. The alternative was Dutch precision which is so...stale. I've never cared for the Dutch painting tradition because although it was realistic, it was also bland...sterile...depressing. Only the French managed to synthesize the realism which emerged from the Renaissance with the idealism of the Enlightenment into the Neoclassicism of the 19th Century -- the pinnacle of Western art.

This is The Spoiled Child (1765), housed at the Hermitage in Russia.

This is Votive Offering to Cupid (1767, housed at the Wallace Collection), which is a good example. Remember how Bob Ross used to paint 'happy trees'? This is a happy painting. Unlike some oily Dutch portrait, it doesn't make you want to go out and slit your wrists. French painting is happy painting. I like happy paintings.

What, did you expect advanced aesthetic analysis from me? I just like purty pictures. That's all.