Saylor.org ARTH207: "Jean-Baptiste Greuze"

This lecture is entitled Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Drama of the Ordinary. So Greuze, and you see a self-portrait of him over here, is another French artist working in the 18th century in a style that was counter to the sumptuousness of the Rococo. And this might remind you of Chardin, who we looked at in the previous subunit. And much like Chardin, Greuze tended to show simple, ordinary people, and his scenes tend to be suffused with a vague sense of morality, sort of like there's some moral message you can take away from his paintings. And this is probably his most famous painting. It's The Village Bride, and it dates to 1761. And we'll take a closer look at it in just a minute. Before we move on, I just wanted to quickly point out, you often hear Greuze's paintings described as sentimental. And they're described as sentimental in his approach to the people depicted and the events depicted. And I think you'll see that he's certainly more sentimental than Chardin was. And Chardin remained a little bit more objective in his approach. So we'll take a look at that comparison as well later on. But once again, I think it's best to start out our discussion comparing Greuze to Rococo contemporaries. So let's do that now. So over here on the left, again, we have The Village Bride. The Village Bride. And that is compared to what should be very familiar to you by this point. And this is Fragonard's The Swing, which dates to 1767. Now, I think you can see right away that Greuze is interested in very different things than Fragonard. You can see that right off the bat, I hope, when you take a look at this. So how so? What am I talking about? What do I mean? Well, let's take a look at the subject matter. Just to remind you, this is lovers on a sort of a secret meeting. And there's all kinds of erotic and sexual undertones. So that's what's going on in Fragonard. In Greuze, we have The Village Bride. And this scene shows us an ordinary, even simple group of people, a family, gathered together in this very humble home. And, you know, they're arranging for the marriage of their daughter. They're sort of working out all the logistical details. So in a way, both of these paintings relate to themes of love. But very different idea of what love is, right? In Fragonard, it's all about eroticism and kind of the secretive, forbidden love. Whereas The Village Bride, this is all sort of out in the open. And these are good people trying to arrange a good, respectable marriage between these young people. So love of a very different kind being portrayed in both of these paintings. And here's kind of where that idea of sentimentality and moralism comes in to Greuze's paintings. They're, again, very sensible, good people making this moral decision. As opposed to what could be interpreted in Fragonard's painting as immoral. Immoral. They're, you know, why do you need to be secretive about something if there's not something wrong with it? Kind of that message going on. And in Greuze's painting, there's a very sweet story of these people, you know, trying to do what's best for their children. And this kind of moralizing message is very much in line with many of the great thinkers and influential people who were vocal in 18th century France. And who were very loudly rejecting what they saw as the upper class frivolity of the Rococo. If you take a look at the style here, you'll also see some real differences. Fragonard seems as though, you know, we've caught these lovers in a moment. You know, we've just sort of witnessed them in this setting. Interestingly, if you take a look at the way Greuze has set up his painting, it's almost like these figures are on a stage. It's like a drama being enacted for our benefit. And even the very exaggerated gestures. I like this man here, especially if you take a look at him. You know, he's got both of his arms out. There's a lot of gesture to communicate emotion. And, you know, this kind of sad figure over here leaning against the young bride. So there's certainly a lot of sweet emotion here. As opposed to Fragonard's kind of secretive, eroticized painting. There's also a clear move away from the lightheartedness of Fragonard's painting style. In Greuze, we have a much more subdued color palette with browns and grays and whites and these, you know, a lot of earth tones. There's also more clearly delineated and crisp use of line to define the form. And a more straightforward approach to light. Whereas in Fragonard and as is more typical of Rococo painting, there's that soft, sumptuous use of color and line. Everything kind of blending into one another. And that kind of golden light. So the style is moving towards sort of that moral clarity that Greuze is trying to achieve as well. Now let's take a look at Greuze in comparison to Chardin, who we looked at earlier. So on the left, once again, we have the village bride. And on the right, we have Chardin's Lady Taking Tea, which we've already discussed in some detail. And I think you can see that in many ways, Greuze's painting is quite similar to Chardin's. Both paintings depict ordinary people in recognizable everyday domestic settings. They've captured private but dignified moments of these people. And again, that's as opposed to the private, yes, yet scandalous moments of images like Fragonard's The Swing. Both images have this kind of subdued color palette and even use of light. But Greuze shows a bit of a move away from Chardin's more objective tone towards more emotional and moralizing style. That's the real direction that Greuze is taking this type of art. And you can see Chardin has kind of just shown this Lady Taking Tea. We're sort of at a remove looking on. Whereas in Greuze's painting, again, it's like a theater. It's like a stage set up for us with all these overtly emotional gestures and a greater, again, that word sentimentality. So he certainly suggests the tastes of art and culture that prevailed as the Rococo kind of faded from popularity. And this is clearly a response to the extravagance of the Rococo, which is fading out in 18th century France. And this kind of suggests what will come later on in French art.