French Rococo Era Painter, 1725-1805 French painter and draughtsman. He was named an associate member of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, in 1755 on the strength of a group of paintings that included genre scenes, portraits and studies of expressive heads (tetes d'expression). These remained the essential subjects of his art for the next 50 years, except for a brief, concentrated and unsuccessful experiment with history painting in the late 1760s, which was to affect his later genre painting deeply. Though his art has often been compared with that of Jean-Simeon Chardin in particular and interpreted within the context of NEO-CLASSICISM in general, it stands so strikingly apart from the currents of its time that Greuze's accomplishments are best described, as they often were by the artist's contemporaries, as unique. He was greatly admired by connoisseurs, critics and the general public throughout most of his life. His pictures were in the collections of such noted connoisseurs as Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully, Claude-Henri Watelet and Etienne-Franeois, Duc de Choiseul. For a long period he was in particular favour with the critic Denis Diderot, who wrote about him in the Salon reviews that he published in Melchior Grimm's privately circulated Correspondance litt?raire. His reputation declined towards the end of his life and through the early part of the 19th century, to be revived after 1850, when 18th-century painting returned to favour, by such critics as Theophile Thore, Arsene Houssaye and, most notably, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt in their book L'Art du dix-huitieme siecle. By the end of the century Greuze's work, especially his many variations on the Head of a Girl, fetched record prices, and his Broken Pitcher (Paris, Louvre) was one of the most popular paintings in the Louvre.   Related Paintings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze :. | Countess E.P.Shuvalova | A Visit to the Priest | The wool Winder | Portrait of a Boy | Portrat eines jungen Madchens |
Related Artists:
COXCIE, Raphael
Flemish painter (b. 1540, Mechelen, d. 1616, Brussels).
Johann Zoffany
German (Resident in Britain) 1734-1810 Johann Zoffany Galleries Painter of portraits, conversation pieces, and theatrical scenes, Zoffany was born in Germany and came to England about 1758 after studying in Italy. He began by painting clock faces and doing hack work, before turning to painting theatrical scenes, especially depicting David Garrick. He was favoured by the royal family. George III nominated him for the Royal Academy in 1769 and recommended him to the duke of Tuscany.
Jacob Maris
(August 25, 1837, The Hague - August 7, 1899, Karlsbad) was a Dutch painter, who with his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters. Maris studied at the Antwerp Academy, and subsequently in Hubertus van Hove's studio during a stay in Paris from 1865 till 1871. He returned to Holland when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and died there in August 1899. Though he painted, especially in early life, domestic scenes and interiors invested with deeply sympathetic feeling, it is as a landscape painter that Maris excelled. He was the painter of bridges and windmills, of old quays, massive towers, and level banks; even more was he the painter of water, and misty skies, and chasing clouds. In all his works, whether in water or oil color, and in his etchings, the subject is always subordinate to the effect. His art is suggestive rather than decorative, and his force does not seem to depend on any preconceived method, such as a synthetical treatment of form or gradations of tone. And yet, though his means appear so simple, the artist's mind seems to communicate with the spectator's by directness of pictorial instinct, and we have only to observe the admirable balance of composition and truthful perspective to understand the sure knowledge of his business that underlies such purely impressionist handling.