French School, 18th Century

Portrait of a young girl,
oil on canvas, 41 x 32.5 cm, framed

The present work is a characteristic tête d’expression for which Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) was celebrated. He was well regarded for his slightly sentimental genre scenes, portraits and studies of expressive heads, producing many such works in the later half of the eighteenth century.

The present painting, however, is one of the earlier examples of this type, of which Greuze painted a large number of variations at the end of his career and especially during the French Revolution, when these subjectswere still collected.

The artist’s expressive and dramatic works are believed to contain underlying moralising content, following the idea that paintings should evoke life experience and provide examples for leading a virtuous life. Greuze also ingeniously combined various artistic traditions and schools, drawing on the bright palette, popular in eighteenth-century France and the naturalistic detail associated with seventeenth-century Dutch masters. Paintings such as the present were in high demand on the contemporary art market. The genre was among the first to be rediscovered by collectors of the late nineteenth century, when the interest in eighteenth-century painting was revived. Late nineteenth-century collectors recognised parallels between Greuze’s works and the most advanced artists of their own day, such as Gustave Courbet.