Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 8 July 2004, lot 126

This fine and characteristic drawing is related to a figure in Greuze's important painting, The Father's Curse: The Punished Son (1778, Paris, Louvre).  There are four preliminary drawings for the composition and the startled boy appears in all of them, but the present drawing is closest to the figure in the painting.¹  Other drawings of heads relating to the same painting are known, and Munhall suggests that some may have been done after the painting to serve as têtes d'expression.²  These drawings were very popular with contemporary collectors and some were also engraved.

1. E. Munhall, Greuze the Draftsman, exhib. cat., New York, Frick Collection, and Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002, p. 151, no. 49 and p. 25, fig. 17

2. Ibid., nos. 78-80, 83