"Portrait of a Young Lady", Jean-Baptiste Greuze? French school of

Descriptio Oil on paper glued to canvas, with an important period frame. Framed measurements 53 x 44 cm, canvas measurements: 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 private collection in New York and auctioned at Christie’s in 2010. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725, Tournus – 1805, Paris) He studied painting in Grandon’s workshop in Lyon, Greuze moved to Paris in 1750 and entered, as a student of Natoire, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. His popularity was confirmed with other melodramatic paintings, depicting young provincial peasant scenes. One of his greatest artistic supporters was Diderot; art critic gave glowing praise to his painting for the moralism of his images. Among his greatest successes can 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 notable works were great success “Father of a family explaining the Bible to his children”, made in 1755, as well as known as “The death of the paralytic” from 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 produce history painting, the highest-ranking genre 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 earned him the enmity and devastating criticism of Denis Diderot. Greuze painted numerous portraits and received much criticism for his libertine paintings. The French Revolution of 1789 made neoclassicism fashionable and Greuze’s paintings fell out of fashion, forcing him to make a living from 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 reaped the allegorical theme, highlighting the Love Offering (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.

Estimate:£25,185

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