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The Listening Girl By Jean Baptiste Greuze

The Listening Girl
By Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)
In the Wallace Collection, London

Greuze, who was the son of an obscure painter, was born at Tournus, near Macon, in France. He went to Paris and achieved his first successes with pictures of historical subjects. When he was thirty he visited Italy, and not unnaturally was inspired to produce paintings of Italian life after his return.

He is best known to the English public by his paintings of young girls, of which "The Listening Girl" is a good example. They possess an originality which reflects the personal style of the artist so unmistakably that they have become a type. Greuze painted these young girls in different ways, but chiefly restricted himself to their heads and shoulders. Besides possessing a common likeness, they resemble each other closely in style and treatment. He varied the title and he varied the costume, just as he varied the features and the details of colouring, but these were but the necessary variations of a familiar manner. They are alike, as their titles are alike - "The Listening Girl," "Girl with a Gauze Scarf," "Girl in a Blue Dress, " "Girl in a White Dress," "Girl with Doves," and "Girl Leaning on Her Hand" - all of them to be seen and admired in the splendid series of this artist's pictures in the Wallace Collection.

These paintings are curiously paradoxical in certain ways. They are types of tender years and simplicity, painted with a lack of simplicity. They are patterns of immaturity and innocence, revealing voluptuous grace and mature allurements. Yet, because they are accepted as types of feminine innocence, we must pay our tribute to the artist whose charming young women are as delightful to-day, and can be appreciated as much by the people of our time, as during the period when they were painted, before the artist's reputation waned, and he died in poverty and obscurity.

From the book "Famous Paintings" printed in 1913.

Online "Name the Painting"

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
biography at Wikipedia

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
pronunciation

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
paintings

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
at Web Museum, Paris

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
paintings at Wikipedia

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Famous Paintings in this Series

M. Bompard A Prayer to the Madonna	Botticelli The Madonna and Child	Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid	Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones The Mill
Jean Charles Cazin Ishmael	John Constable Boat-Building Near Flatford Mill	John Crome On the Skirts of the Forest	Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret The Blessed Bread
Theophile Emanuel Duverger Alone	C.W. Furse Diana of the Uplands	W.H. Gore "'Listed"	Peter Graham A Rainy Day
Jean Baptiste Greuze The Listening Girl	Sir James Guthrie A Highland Funeral	Frans Hals A Man With a Glove In His Hand	Hans Holbein the Younger The Ambassadors
Henry Holiday Dante and Beatrice	Sir Edwin Landseer Suspense	Sir Edwin Landseer A Naughty Child	H.H. La Thangue Mowing Bracken
Sir Thomas Lawrence Caroline of Brunswick, Queen of George IV.	G.D. Leslie Sun and Moon Flowers	J. Seymour Lucas Flirtation	Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier The Print Collector
Jean Francois Millet The Angelus	Jean Francois Millet Going to Work	Sir William Quiller Orchardson The Farmer's Daughter	Ralph Peacock Ethel
Rembrandt His Own Portrait	Sir Joshua Reynolds The Infant Samuel	Sir Joshua Reynolds The Strawberry Girl	George Romney The Parson's Daughter
W. Dendy Sadler A Good Story	W. Dendy Sadler Friday	William Small The Last Match	J.M. Swan On the Alert, Lioness and Cubs
J.M.W. Turner Peace: Burial at Sea of the Body of Sir David Wilkie	J.M.W. Turner Rain Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway	Velazquez Portrait of a Spanish Lady "La Femme a L'Eventail"	Frederick Walker The Vagrants
George Frederick Watts Hope	James McNeill Whistler My Mother	Anders Zorn A Fisherman	Index Page Famous Paintings