Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 7 July 1966, lot 102;
McRoberts and Tunnard, London;
Mr. and Mrs. Lester Francis Avnet, Long Island and New York;
purchased from the Estate of Lester F. Avnet, 20 April 1972

New York, The American Federation of Arts, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Lester Avnet, 1968, no. 26;
Long Island, Hillwood Art Gallery, Drawing the Fine Line: Discovering European Drawings in Long Island Private Collections, 1986, pp. 52-53

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, London 1837, vol. 8, p. 439, no. 151

Window mounted. Some abrasion and restoration along the margins. Left bottom corner repaired. The black chalk quite fresh and image strong. Sold mounted and framed in a modern, wooden and gilded frame.
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This is one of a number of studies by Greuze relating to a print that he seems to have asked his pupil to Wille to make in 1766;  Wille, however, passed the project on to Jean-Michel Moreau and Pierre-Charles Ingouf, who actually executed the engraving.¹  Greuze made a number of drawings to guide his printmakers.  The present, extensively worked up sheet is in the same direction as the print but there are some differences in the details, and as Edgar Munhall discussed in the Long Island exhibition catalogue, he believes it must be viewed, like the other drawings, as representing a stage in Greuze's creative process. 

Other drawings linked to this project are in Hamburg, Narbonne, Besançon² and Saint Petersburg.³  A further study was with Christie's in 2004.⁴  The Hamburg drawing is identical to the print but in reverse, and Munhall has suggested that the present sheet may have been born as a counterproof of the Hamburg drawing, which Greuze subsequently worked up into a finished drawing.   Counterproofing would have allowed the artist to see the composition in reverse, a process often adopted by artists as an aid in the development of the final design.

Subjects of domesticity and marital bliss frequently occur in Greuze's oeuvre and some images, as suggested by Munhall, may even be autobiographical, reflecting the early years of Greuze's own happy marriage.⁷

1.  J. Martin, Catalogue raisonné de L'oeuvre peint et dessiné de Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Paris 1908, no. 185
2.  Hamburg, Inv. no. 1795, Narbonne, Inv. no. CB 766, Besançon, Inv. no. D943
3.  F. Monod and L. Hautecoeur, Les dessins de Greuze conservés a L'Académie des Beaux-Arts de Saint Petersbourg, Paris, 1922, p. 25, no. 27
6.  Sale, Paris, Christie's, 18 March 2004, lot 136
7.  E. Munhall, Greuze the Draftsman, New York 2002, p. 102