Jean-Baptiste Greuze's diminutive picture of a rosy-cheeked girl wringing out her linen was one of fourteen works that he exhibited at the Salon of 1761 in Paris. This lively and engrossing book traces the history of the Getty Museum's painting, compares the work to other laundresses painted by Greuze, and explores social mores and the role of artists model in the eighteenth century. It provides an enlightening account of Greuze's life and times and the influences on his work.
Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Frick Collection, New York, May 14-Aug. 4, 2002, and at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Sept. 10-Dec. 1, 2002. Exhibition curated by Edgar Munhall, Curator Emeritus of The Frick Collection, who also wrote the catalogue. Includes catalogue entries for 95 graphic works, and one painted self-portrait, by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805). Each entry accompanied by one or more illustrations. Includes summary biography and selected bibliography. Foreword by Samuel Sachs II and Deborah Gribbon.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725 - 1805) was a French painter of portraits, genre scenes, and history painting. Settled in Paris, Greuze soon won the notice and support of the well-known connoisseur La Live de Jully, the brother-in-law of Madame d'Epinay. In 1755 Greuze exhibited his Aveugle trompe, upon which he was immediately certified by the Academy. Towards the close of the same year he left France for Italy, in company with the Abbe Louis Gougenot. Gougenot had some acquaintance with the arts, and was highly valued by the Academicians, who, during his journey with Greuze, elected him an honorary member of their body on account of his studies in mythology and allegory. In 1765 he reached the zenith of his powers and reputation. In that year he was represented with no less than thirteen works, amongst which may be cited "La Jeune Fille qui pleure son oiseau mort", "La Bonne Mere", "Le Mauvais fils puni" (Louvre) and "La Malediction paternelle" (Louvre). The Academy took occasion to press Greuze for his diploma picture, the execution of which had been long delayed, and forbade him to exhibit on their walls until he had complied with their regulations. Greuze wished to be received as a historical painter, and produced a work which he intended to vindicate his right to despise his qualifications as a genre artist. The Academicians received their new member with all due honours, but at the close of the ceremonies the Director addressed Greuze in these words: "Sir, the Academy has accepted you, but only as a genre painter; Greuze, greatly incensed, quarrelled with his confreres, and ceased to exhibit until, in 1804, the Revolution had thrown open the doors of the Academy to all the world. In the following year, on 4 March 1805, he died in great poverty.
With this widely acclaimed work, Michael Fried revised the way in which eighteenth-century French painting and criticism are viewed and understood. Analyzing paintings produced between 1753 and 1781 and the comments of a number of critics who wrote about them, especially Dennis Diderot, Fried discovers a new emphasis in the art of the time, based not on subject matter or style but on values and effects.
"Since 2004, the Dallas Museum of Art has been the repository of the renowned collection of eighteenth-century French art assembled by the late Michael Rosenberg. The long-term loan of these masterpieces greatly enhances the collection of European art at the Museum, and the series of scholarly lectures funded by the Foundation, the Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series, gives a powerful boost to its European art program. Those lectures, presented by top scholars in the field of European art history, are re-presented in this volume"--
Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.
This deeply personal account of emotion and vulnerability draws upon anecdotes related to individual works of art to present a chronicle of how people have shown emotion before works of art in the past.
