Page 53 - Studio International - November 1972

had enjoyed immense popularity. With quite go along with the author in her
Sévere et Caracalla he aspired to become a predilection for Sophie Arnauld and the
history painter. Neither the public nor the Countess Mollien, but I whole-heartedly agree
academicians, for whom it was painted, were with her when she says : 'He is free from
ready for this new seriousness. The picture was mannerism only in his portraits, which are
popularly interpreted as a domestic quarrel in masterly, and which he produced at a high pitch
the house of a paralytic (a reference to an earlier of excellence throughout his long life' (p. 91).
painting), and the academicians said of it : There is one thing, however, I must say and
`Monsieur, the Academie receives you as a genre that is that the quality of the plates is deplorable.
painter; we have taken into account your Something has gone badly wrong, and at the
former productions, which are excellent, and price (£7.00) I am inclined to take the
shut our eyes to this one which is worthy unprecedented step of suggesting that all copies
neither of the Academie nor of you!' (They were should be withdrawn until this defect is
not entirely wrong, as a visit to the current remedied. There is hardly a plate in which the
exhibition at the Royal Academy will confirm). tonal values are correct; many show signs of
Greuze once more set out to please and by so granulation; and at least four are speckled with
doing produced, among others, a series of white. This makes nonsense of much of the
studies of young girls unrivalled for coyness, text — indeed in some cases, only a visit to the
sensuality and on occasion lasciviousness, by Wallace Collection reassured me that the author
even the worst (or best) practitioners of the was not talking nonsense. When a publisher gets
nineteenth century. At the same time he into his hands a book of this kind he owes it
pursued his aspirations as a painter of heroic to the author and the public to match the
subjects, now disguised as homely moral tales, excellence of scholarship and presentation with
of which the Malediction Paternelle and Fils Puni equal excellence of production. q
(1777-78) were the most remarkable. By then CYRIL BARRETT
the public was beginning to tire of vapidity and
was prepared for stronger moral meat. Strong by divine right
Dr Brookner reminds us that these pictures Turner: Rain Steam and Speed by John Gage;
were, unlike their predecessors, built not only Van Dyck: Charles Ion Horseback by Roy
around a story but also on an idea. 'They Strong; Piero della Francesca: The
represent didactic moral painting before the Flagellation by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin;
advent of David, who learned so much from Monet: Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe by Joel
Greuze . . . Greuze's incorrigible seriousness . . . Isaacson. All in 'Art in Context Series'. Each
sought to convey that life does contain elements 122 pp. approx., black and white illustrations,
of conflict and disaster' (p. 123). plus i full colour plate. The Penguin Press.
£I.95.
It is ironical that in the 178os Greuze was
eclipsed by the Neo-Classicism which he had
anticipated and, by his example, helped to There have been quite a number of series of art
further. It was then that his weaknesses became books devoted to particular works of art, and it
apparent. Had he, in 1769, refused to is an attractive form — the stone thrown into the
compromise with popular demand, he might pond and the ripples pursued — but the recent
have still been popular in 1789. Again if he had Penguin series has a special slant. The single
had more respect for draughtsmanship — and work is examined more as a cultural symbol
there is abundant evidence of his capacity — he than as a work of art. Meaning and intention are
would not have been so piteously shown up as a what matters. How has a picture fared as
bad draughtsman once his sentimentality was symbol ? What were the conditions that
no longer in fashion. informed its original meaning ? This approach
But, in fact, Greuze had the last laugh — if is a sign of the times. If there is one feature
that is the appropriate word. With the reaction linking art activities at the moment it is an
against the aridity and severity of awareness of context, an insistence, perhaps,
Neo Classicism, he came back into his own. He that you can't take the pictureness of pictures for
numbers in his progeny not only his granted. Aestheticism is played out, and with it
contemporaries Witte, Lépicié, Madame has gone that imperial eyemanship (it seems to
Vigée-Lebrun and Romney (and Reynolds of smell the same as the pretension that Western
the Infant Samuel) but also many technology is 'neutral') which could, in the first
nineteenth-century artists, French and English, half of the century, reduce all the paintings,
like Boilly, Prud'hon, Aubry, Wheatley, sculptures and artifacts in the world to the same
Morland, Northcote, Redgrave, Ibbetson and I level. Universal art ? Who wants it now, at the
suspect (though Dr Brookner does not mention price of meaning ? Not that we can ever know
him) Rothwell. irrefutably what was signified by a Dan mask or
All in all, Greuze emerges from the pages of a Romanesque capital or a National Gallery
this book as an absorbingly interesting person, masterpiece. That would mean being somewhere
not only in his historical setting but also in the else in space and time. It's not for the data of
situations he created for himself, and in his antiquarian escape that one turns to the history
subsequent influences. Apart from the works of art but for a sharper sense of the present, and
already mentioned — and there are a few others — whenever we get a fresh grip on the difference
Greuze was at his best in his portraits. I do not between how a picture looks now and what it is