As a preview of the celebration of the Greuze Year in 2025, for the bicentenary of his birth, the Éric Coatalem gallery unveils, thanks to the generosity of twenty-five collectors, a treasure of fifty-five works by the artist, often unpublished or hidden. This Self-portrait is one of its flagships. Originally from Tournus, Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was a painter and draftsman adored during his lifetime by European and Russian collectors, but then eclipsed during the Revolution and under the Empire.
The spirit of the 18th century
His rediscovery at the end of the 19th century, notably thanks to the brothers Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-1870), places him among the most emblematic artists of the 18th century. His style, marked by a Dutch-influenced realism, is mainly used in genre painting and portraiture. Jean-Baptiste Greuze favors representations of intimate scenes, often complex and animated compositions, where he exalts family virtues with a certain – sometimes excessive – theatricality. He excels in portraits of children, which he knows how to highlight to capture their liveliness.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Self-portrait, circa 1761, oil on canvas, 61.3 x 50 cm, private collection. Courtesy Galerie Éric Coatalem, Paris. ©T. Hennocque.
And its female representations are very identifiable, with structured, even stereotypical faces, eyes often raised to the sky, with half-closed eyelids, and even swooning expressions, lascivious attitudes. There is all the frivolous spirit of the 18th century there, which sometimes borders on mawkishness. All this contrasts with the austerity and seriousness of his self-portraits, whose pictorial treatment is more formal. Here the scrutinizing eye dominates, with apparently a slight divergent strabismus, which could explain its habit of posing in three quarters. The staging is studied, without effusion, as if he wanted to keep control of his social image and the image he wishes to reflect back to himself?
The opinion of Antoine Chatelain, research fellow at the National Institute of Art History, author of the exhibition catalog
This self-portrait is a recent rediscovery which remarkably completes the artist’s corpus and which must undoubtedly be placed at the beginning of the 1760s. He depicts himself without artifice, in a simple studio costume. The touch is lively, very characteristic of his style. It is the image of an artist confident in his art, aged around thirty, at a time when his compositions are conquering all of Paris. This self-portrait is among Greuze’s most brilliant, who sometimes depicted himself with a mechanical pencil, sometimes with a hat, not without a touch of vanity, for which he was so often criticized.
“Greuze, the child and the family”
Galerie Éric Coatalem, 136, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris
From November 6 to December 20
1 – Portraits and self-portraits from the 16th to the 18th century [3/10]
