IMPORTANT OLD MASTER PAINTINGS AND HAUTE EPOQUE AUCTION, INCLUDING MODERN
Oil on canvas, with important frame of the time. Framed measures 53 x 44 cm, canvas measures: 34 x 29 cm. It is accompanied by a comparative technical report. Exceptional discovery of the oil version “Portrait of a Young Lady” of which only the pastel version was known from a New York private collection and auctioned at Christie’s in 2010. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725, Tournus – 1805, Paris) After studying painting at the Grandon workshop in Lyon, Greuze moved to Paris in 1750 and entered the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as a student of Natoire. His popularity was confirmed by other paintings of a melodramatic nature, depicting young peasant scenes from the provinces. One of his biggest artistic supporters was Diderot; art critic gave a glowing praise of his painting for the moralism of his images. Among his greatest successes may be mentioned The Village Wedding or Acordée de village presented at the salon of 1761, where he once again shows a bourgeois rural interior. Among his outstanding works, “Father of the family explaining the Bible to his children”, made in 1755, as well as also known as “The death of the paralytic” of 1763, a painting that represents an elderly father on his deathbed surrounded by of his family. This painting is related to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s novel, “La nouvelle Héloïse”, published that same year. After achieving great success with the public and critics, he began to harvest history painting, a genre of higher rank within official painting. His first work in this order is the so-called Seventh-Severe. Contrary to what he was looking for, this piece was a source of conflict with the Academy, since not only was it not accepted into the competition, but it also earned him the enmity and devastating criticism of Denis Diderot. Greuze painted numerous portraits and received much criticism for his paintings of a libertine character. The French Revolution of 1789 made neoclassicism fashionable and Greuze’s paintings fell out of fashion, forcing him to live off his classes as an art teacher. The portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, which he commissioned in his last years, did not prevent him from spending his last years in poverty. Likewise, Greuze harvested the allegorical theme, being outstanding the Offering of love (1769), mythological: Danae; or also religious, such as Santa María Egipciaca. WORKS IN COMPARISON: “Portrait of a Young Lady” in pastel on paper, Christie’s, January 27, 2010, lot 145. Provenance: former private collection, Spain.
