Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Executed with point of the brush and gray wash and heightened with golden brown ink, this lyrical and spirited drawing is an outstanding example of Greuze’s spontaneous drawings executed principally in wash, which appear less frequently at auction than his studies in red chalk.

A rather ambiguous subject, described in the Chennevières collection (see Provenance) as ‘L’Amour conduisant un jeune homme vers le lit où repose une femme nue,’ it does not appear to relate to any of Greuze’s surviving paintings. Its free style and manner of setting out the composition with quick bold strokes and fluid wash is, though, customary of the artist’s preparatory sketches that relate to his larger painted commissions. Stylistically, it can be compared with other classically inspired subject drawings that date to the late 1760s. It was during this period that Greuze was trying to promote and make a name for himself as a history painter, concentrating on themes relating to classical mythological and history. Two very similarly executed drawings in pen and ink and wash, also from the late 1760s, are in the Musée Greuze, Tournus: Le repos pendant la fuite en Égypte and L’Amour triomphant d’Hercule.¹ Both those drawings share the same impulsiveness and fervor in their handling, and all three sheets pulsate with energy, demonstrating how quickly yet accurately Greuze could prepare his compositions. 

Greuze's ability to produce strong narratives, almost theatrical in quality, is very much evident in the present drawing. Like a stage set, his characters interact beneath a curtain-like backdrop, their emphatic gestures conveying the drama of the scene, as the winged figure of Love gestures towards the bed, where the reclining female, hand on head, swoons, as she awaits the young gentleman.

1. Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) et Le Collection de la Musée Greuze de Tournus, exhib. cat., Tournus 2000, nos. 11 (L’Amour triomphant d’Hercule) and 12 (Le repos pendant la fuite en Égypte)