Part 2

Exceptionally romantic, too, was his love for the beautiful Lætitia during the two years that he spent in Italy. Greuze had carried with him to that country letters of introduction to the Duc del Or...., by whom he had been received with great cordiality. The Duke's wife had died, but he had a charming daughter, Lætitia, to whom it was arranged that Greuze should give lessons in painting. Greuze was a man to whom women and girls were instinctively attracted, and Lætitia fell in love with him, with all the violence and passion of the Italian temperament. Her beauty and her charming manners had also fascinated Greuze; but he was very much disconcerted when he found that she loved him, because he was conscious {17} of the gulf which birth and fortune had placed between them. He, therefore, rigorously repressed his desire to see her, and forced himself to stay away from the palace.

Meanwhile, his doleful demeanour, innocent face, and light curls obtained for him, from Fragonard and other French students, who were in Italy at the time, the name of the love-sick cherub.

Greuze at length heard that Lætitia was ill, and that no one could discover the cause or nature of her malady. He loitered near her home to try to obtain tidings of her, and one day he encountered the Duke, who took him to the palace to show him two pictures by Titian, which he had recently purchased.

"My daughter," he said, "has promised herself the pleasure of copying them when her health has been restored. I hope that you will come to superintend her work. That is what she wishes."

The Duke further asked Greuze to make a copy of one of the pictures as soon as he could, because he wished to send the copy away as a present. Greuze could not refuse; and thus he was soon installed in the palace again, working there day by day. Each morning he was informed, by an old retainer of the family, who had been Lætitia's nurse, how the young lady fared. The old nurse knew the two were in love with each other. Indeed, a little later, she arranged a secret interview between them, {18} and Greuze found his idol pale and thin, but not less beautiful than before.

At first neither of them could speak; but, encouraged by the nurse, Lætitia blurted out:

"Monsieur Greuze, I love you. Tell me frankly, do you love me?"

Greuze was too happy to speak, and Lætitia, mistaking the cause of his silence, hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears.

This melted Greuze to the uttermost. He threw himself at her feet, and then, in the intervals between his impetuous kisses, he poured out impassioned declarations of his love.

"I can now be happy," cried Lætitia, clapping her hands, and behaving like a gladdened child. She ran and embraced her nurse, and again and again gave expression to her ecstasy. "Listen to me, you two; here is my scheme. I love Greuze, and I will marry him."

"My dear child, you dream," replied the nurse. "What about your father?"

"My nurse, you wish to say that my father will not consent. Well I know that. He wishes me to marry his eternal Casa--the oldest and the ugliest of men; or the young Count Palleri, whom I do not know, nor ever wish to know. I am rich through my mother, and I give my fortune to Greuze, whom I marry. He takes me to France, and you will follow us there."

And intoxicated with the future which she had arranged, she detailed, with a delicious {19} volubility, the life that they would lead together in Paris. Greuze would continue to paint. He would become another Titian, and in the end her father would be proud to have such a son-in-law.

When Greuze next saw Lætitia he had had time to review all the circumstances, and he appeared with a woeful face. Lætitia derided him, and then tried to coax him tenderly out of his gloomy mood. At last, becoming angry, she called him perfidious, and reproached him that he had pretended to love her that he might the more easily break her heart. She cried and tore her hair, and Greuze fell at her feet, and promised to obey her blindly.

But as soon as he had left the palace he saw the folly of it all. He saw the despair of her father, heard his maledictions, and felt his vengeance, and all the misfortune which would come upon their love. He then decided that he would not relent again, nor see Lætitia any more. As an excuse for not visiting her he pretended that he was ill, and this simulated illness became real. For three months he was ailing, and part of the time he was consumed by fever and delirium.

At the end of his illness Lætitia was still eager to marry him; but with extraordinary firmness of will he resisted the temptation and fled from Italy, carrying with him secretly a copy of the portrait of Lætitia, which he had painted for her father.

Many years later, when Greuze was once {20} more a poor man, he wrote in reply to the Grand Duchess of Russia, who had offered ten thousand livres for the portrait of Lætitia, "If you were to give me all the riches of the Empire of Russia they would not pay for that picture," and probably in his old age he read yet again the letter he had received from Lætitia, eight years after he quitted Rome. "Yes, my dear Greuze, your old pupil is now a good mother; I have five charming children, whom I adore. My eldest daughter is worthy to be offered as a subject for your happy talent; she is beautiful as an angel. Ask the Prince d'Este. My husband almost convinces me that I continue to be young and pretty, so much does he still love me. As I have told you, this happiness is due to you, and I love you for having prevented me from loving you."

Greuze had scarcely returned from Italy when he was attracted by Mademoiselle Anne-Gabrielle Babuty, who was in charge of a bookshop in Paris. Diderot, who had himself been very much in love with her, has described her as a smart dashing young woman, of upright carriage, and with a complexion of lilies and roses. De Goncourt also speaks of her numerous charms. She had a pretty face, which Greuze seemed to be never tired of painting. It was the smooth face of a child, and had an attractive roundness, and a soft, tender, peach-like delicate complexion. The expression was simple and unaffected, and there was enough of piquancy to animate a face {21} which, for all its manifold good qualities, would else have had a tendency towards insipidity. Her eyebrows were very much arched, and this circumstance lent to her face its expression of naïveté. Her eyelashes were long, and when her eyes were downcast they gave a charming look to her face, resting like a caress upon her cheeks. Her little nose, the nose of a child, was exquisitely formed, and seemed to indicate an alert and lively character, and her rosy lips were also finely shaped, and particularly alluring.

Her portrait appears often in the paintings of Greuze in _La Philosophie Endormie_, _La Mère Bien Aimée_, _La Voluptueuse_, and in many others.

The story of their first encounter, and of their subsequent relations, is best told by a few extracts from a document which Greuze had cause to execute some years afterwards. He wrote:

"A few days after having arrived from Rome--I know not by what fatality--I passed along the _Rue Saint Jacques_, and saw in her shop Mademoiselle Babuty, who was the daughter of a bookseller.

"I was struck with admiration, for she had a very beautiful figure; and that I might have a better chance of seeing her I bought a number of books. Her face was without character, and was indeed rather sheep-like. I paid her as many compliments as she could wish, and she knew who I was, for my reputation had already commenced, and I had been recognised by the Academy.

{22}

"She was then thirty and some odd years of age, and therefore in danger of remaining single all her life. She employed all the cajoleries that were possible to attach me to her, and to cause me to come again, and I continued to pay her visits for about a month. One afternoon I found her more animated than usual. She took one of my hands, and, regarding me with a very passionate look, she said, 'Monsieur Greuze, would you marry me if I were to consent?'

"I avow I was confounded by such a question. I said to her, 'Mademoiselle, would not one be too happy to pass his life with a woman so lovable as you are?'

"Of course, this was but lightly said, yet that did not prevent her from taking action at once; for, upon the very next morning, she went with her mother to the Quai des Orfèvres, and there bought, at the shop of Monsieur Strass, earrings of false diamonds, and next day she did not hesitate to wear these in her ears.

"As she lived in a shop, the neighbours were not slow in paying her compliments, and in asking her who had presented these jewels to her.

"With downcast eyes she answered softly, 'It is Monsieur Greuze who has given them to me.'

"'You are married, then?'

"'Ah, no;' but this was said in a way that implied that secretly she had married me. My friends began at once to congratulate me, but I assured them there was nothing more false than {23} the news they had heard, and that I had not money enough to enable me to marry.

"Outraged at such effrontery, I did not return to Mademoiselle Babuty any more. I lived at that time in _le faubourg Saint Germain_, _rue du Petit Lion_, in an hotel of furnished rooms called _l'Hôtel des Vignes_. Three days passed, during which I heard no more of the matter, and I was already thinking of other affairs, when one fine day she came knocking at my door accompanied by her little servant girl. I took no notice of the knocks, but she knew I was there, and she attacked my door with her hands and feet like a veritable fury. Then, to prevent a public scandal, I opened my door, and she threw herself into my room all in tears. She said to me:

"'I have done wrong, Monsieur Greuze, but it is love which has misled me. It is the attachment I have for you which has made me resort to such a stratagem. My life is in your hands.' Then she flung herself at my knees, and said she would not rise again until I had promised that I would marry her. She took my two hands in hers, and they were wet with tears. I pitied her, and I promised all she wished.

"We were not married until two years afterwards, in the parish of Saint Medard--which was not her parish--for fear of the pleasantries that would have been made, seeing that she had said that we were already married. I commenced housekeeping with twenty-six livres the day after our wedding."

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During the first seven years of their married life they had three children. One of the children died, leaving the artist and his wife with two daughters.

Concerning these seven years no complaint is made about the conduct of Madame Greuze; but from that time it would be difficult to find a more unhappy household than that of Greuze. His wife was a continual torment, hindering him in his work, putting his life on a lower level, and making his home intolerable. Diderot even blamed her for the infelicity of his Academy picture, and Greuze himself suspected her of having poisoned the minds of the members of the Academy against him.

Her faithlessness, gross as it was, received further aggravation from the insolent openness in which it manifested itself. She received men of the most disreputable character at her house, caring naught whether her husband knew or not; and she polluted the morals of his boy pupils. Her children she neglected and put into a convent, one for eleven years, and the other for twelve. "It is a year and seven days since mamma saw us," said one of the girls sadly one day, when their father had gone to visit them.

Many a time Greuze went in bodily fear of her violence. When she asked for the help of a servant, and Greuze suggested that she should wait a little longer, until he could pay the wages of one, she dealt him, with all her might, a blow upon his face. She squandered in all {25} manner of foolish extravagance the large fortune which Greuze received from the sale of the engravings from his works; and then she destroyed his account books, that the extent of her defalcations might never be known. Her household duties were abandoned, and Greuze nearly died when one day he warmed for himself some food in a saucepan in which verdigris had been suffered to accumulate.

At last her violence, her rank immorality, her extravagance and her neglect could be borne no longer, and in despair Greuze obtained from the magistrates the legal right to live apart from his wife.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

The sadness of the story of Greuze's married life is all the more touching because he had the qualities of a true and tender husband. It is indeed not less than a tragedy that, constituted as he was, he should have been denied the companionship of a woman worthy of the great affection of which his nature was capable. Often querulous and brusque with men, his manner with women was gracious and respectful, his politeness the true politeness of the kind heart that desires the well-being of others. As we have seen, his relations with Lætitia were governed by a most chivalrous ideal of conduct, an ideal which seems quite quixotic when we think of the period in which he lived. As Lætitia had been attracted towards him, so {26} also were most of the women who moved in his social sphere; and, eager as he was for praise from men, it came with added sweetness from the lips of women. It is not surprising that he painted women with such perfect charm, because his heart was in the work.

Greuze, though only of middle height, had yet an impressive personality; and people of any discernment saw at a glance that he was a man of distinction. His head was well formed, his forehead high, his eyes large and bright, and of a good shape, and his features indicated genius, candour, and an energetic will.

His conversation was sincere and elevated, and often piquant and animated. He sometimes showed signs of nervousness and irritability, and became quite fiery when his work was criticised, or when he thought he was not receiving the treatment which his vanity prompted him to think he ought to receive.

This self-esteem, always abnormal, had been increased by his early success with _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants_. "Our painter is a little vain," wrote Diderot in 1765, "but his vanity is that of a child;" and it was generally recognised that there was very much of naïveté in his conceit, and that his good qualities compensated for any displays of childish self-sufficiency.

At times his talk became inflated and bombastic. "Oh, sir!" he would say, concerning his own picture, "here is a work which {27} astonishes even me who painted it. I cannot understand how a man can, with a few pounded earths, animate a canvas in this way," and no ridicule could cure him of this flamboyant manner.

"That is beautiful," said Monsieur de Marigny, standing before Greuze's painting of _La Pleureuse_.

"Sir, I know it; moreover, people praise me, and yet I am in need of more commissions."

"It is because you have a host of enemies," said Vernet, who was present at the time, "and amongst those enemies is one who appears to love you to the verge of folly, but he will nevertheless ruin you."

"And who is that?"

"It is yourself."

Greuze's irritability sometimes revealed itself in downright rudeness. Natoire, the professor at the Academy, looking through a portfolio of drawings of some other artist, questioned the accuracy of one of the figures, whereupon Greuze turned upon him and said:

"Sir, you would be happy if you could draw one as well."

The Dauphin, when Greuze had painted his portrait, wishing to show how pleased he was with Greuze's work, paid him the high compliment of suggesting that he should now paint the portrait of the Dauphine, who was present. Greuze looked at her face, and alluding to the thick covering of rouge which appeared upon {28} her cheeks, asked to be excused, for he could not paint such a face as that. No wonder that Mariette should say that Greuze had the manners of a cobbler.

There are also hints that Greuze was sometimes jealous. In _Un Homme d'Autrefois_, by the Marquis Costa de Beauregard, it has been narrated that Henry Costa, one of the author's ancestors, wishing to be an artist, went at the age of fourteen years to Paris. He was received with great kindness by Greuze, and the enthusiastic boy said "_il parle comme un ange_," but in an article contributed by Augustus Mansion to _Temple Bay_ we have read, "Another chagrin followed. Greuze became jealous of his prodigy, tried to shake him off, ignored letters, and declined to permit himself to be seen at work. It was an unkindness keenly felt by the boy, who was learning every day a little more of the world: '_Quelle froideur et quelle mystère!_' he says. 'Greuze told me he could not communicate certain processes he was employing, that what was useful for him might not be the same for me. I cannot understand how a fine genius can be capable of such meanness.'"

Yet one cannot estimate the whole character of Greuze by these isolated incidents. Like other people, he said and did different things when he was in different moods, and we know that when the artists of Paris held aloof from Prudhon, whose poverty had compelled him to "draw vignettes on letter sheets for the {29} government offices, business cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for bon-bonnières... Greuze alone treated him amicably."

Greuze's industry was abnormal. As a worker he seemed indefatigable. He was absorbed in his art, putting all his soul and brains into his pictures, and seeming to live for his work, and for no other thing.

{30}

CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WORK

There is so little variety in the works of Greuze that if one divides them into two main classes, nearly all his pictures, with the exception of the portraits, may be placed in one or other of these two divisions. In one class there are his _genre_ pictures, containing as a rule many figures; and then, better known than these, and of greater merit, are his single heads of girls and boys, which constitute the other principal category.

His first great success was achieved with his picture of the _genre_ class, _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants_, and this book contains an illustration from another popular work of this sort called _L'Accordée de Village_. A section of this volume explains the relative position of Greuze in the history of art, and reasons are given which account for the great acclamation with which this and similar works were received in Paris when first they were exhibited. Meanwhile we will consider the intrinsic merits of these pictures without reference to the novelty of their appearance--an appearance in which a number of adventitious circumstances are involved.

{31}

In painting pictures of scenes in the life of humble people, Greuze had an aim other than the representation of some beauty of nature by which his own emotions had been profoundly stirred. He wished to play the schoolmaster, and the history of painting has demonstrated that, whatever may be the immediate effect of pictures that have been wrought in this mood, they have never been the pictures that have endured for all time the test of a comparison with the severest standards of excellence in art, and they have invariably sunk into their own place--amongst pictures not in the first class.

Again and again it has been shown that a man cannot be a preacher or a story-writer on canvas and at the same time an artist of the first rank. The reason for this is that it is not the function of pictorial art to tell tales, nor to preach sermons, though artists can do both, and yet be very popular.

"Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs: it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." And one may apply the same remark to the pulpiteering of the painter with much less risk of evoking a protest.

During recent years this truth has begun to receive recognition. Théophile Gautier has written strenuously against story-telling pictures, and Whistler has argued that Art "is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having no desire to teach--seeking {32} and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times."

While these opinions of modern critics upon anecdotal art are in our minds, it will be appropriate to mention Greuze's own views as revealed in what he called "_une note historique_" upon his painting of _La Belle-Mère_. "For a long time I had wished," he says, "to paint that character, but in each sketch the expression of the stepmother always appeared to me to be feeble and unsatisfactory. One day, however, when I was crossing the Pont-Neuf, I saw two women, who spoke to one another with much vehemence. One of them began to shed tears, and she exclaimed, 'Such a stepmother too! Yes, she gave me bread, but in giving it to me she broke my teeth.' That was a _coup de lumière_ for me; I returned to the house, and I made the sketch for my picture, which contains five figures: the step-mother, the daughter of the dead mother, the grandmother of the orphan, the daughter of the stepmother, and a child of three years. I have supposed in my picture that it is the dinner-hour, and that the poor little girl goes to take a seat at the table with the other children. Then the stepmother takes a piece of bread from the table, and, holding the orphan back by her apron, thrusts the bread roughly into her mouth. I have set myself the task of showing in that action the deliberate hate of the woman. The child seeks to evade her stepmother's violence, and seems as one {33} who would say, 'Why would you ill-use me? I have done you no harm.' The child's expression is a mixture of shyness and of fear. Her grandmother is at the other end of the table. Harrowed by grief, she lifts her eyes to heaven, and, with hands trembling, seems to say, 'Ah! my daughter, where are you? What misfortunes! what bitterness!' The daughter of the stepmother, not at all sympathetic concerning the lot of her sister, laughs to witness the despair of the poor old woman, and, in ridicule, draws her mother's attention to her gestures. The infant of the family, whose heart has not yet been corrupted, gratefully stretches out her arms towards the sister who has bestowed so much kindness upon her. I have wished to paint a woman who maltreats a child that does not belong to her, and who, by a double crime, has also corrupted the heart of her own daughter."

Here, then, we see an anecdotal painting in the making. Although this rehearsal is very touching, as a revelation of the kind heart of the man, it yet seems to-day a particularly naïve exposition of the motive for a work of art. Nothing could show with greater clearness the wide gulf that, in the art world, lies between the end of the eighteenth century and the end of a century which closed with discussions of the theories of impressionists, vibrists, symbolists and pointillists, and with the theories of those who, denying that art is primarily moral, or even intellectual, have contended that it is {34} simply a means by which we are made to respond to an artist's emotion.