"The village bride" by or after Jean-Baptiste... Lot 4553

"The village bride" by or after Jean-Baptiste Greuze In 1761, Jean Baptiste Greuze created his painting "The village bride" or "L'Accordée de Village", now kept in the Louvre in Paris under inventory number 5037. The painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1761 and immediately met with widespread acclaim - not least because Greuze made use of an artistic trick. He submitted the painting after previous announcement only shortly before the end of the exhibition, in order to increase the curiosity of the public. The painting experienced a great rush, with Diderot reporting that he had difficulty approaching the painting. In the exhibition, Greuze's work was given the explanatory title "Un mariage, et l'instant où le père de l'Accordée délivre la dot à son gendre. [Eng: A wedding, and the moment when the father of the fiancée presents the dowry to his son-in-law]". Audiences and critics praised the moral painting in the highest terms: "... [the painting] ... astonishes and inspires from the beginning ... [by the] power of its narrative character, its wealth of realistic detail ... [and] the power with which it leads the viewer to a complete understanding of the scene ...". The depiction is an impressive moral portrait of the time, when girls were given money and property from the parental home to marry in a manner befitting their station. The family has gathered with a notary in a rural hall. In the middle stands the future married couple. While the groom receives the money bag of his father-in-law and pays attention to his remarks like pathetic gestures, his thoughtful bride timidly holds on to his right arm. The farewell of the mother and sister to the young woman leaving the parental home is obviously difficult for both of them. Greuze portrays the actual protagonists - the bride and groom - as rather passive and unemotional protagonists, subordinating themselves to the conventions and ceremonial of their time. Only on the left side of the painting, with the emotions of the mother and sister, the feelings considered typical female come into play, while on the right side of the men rather cool business sense dominates, which is not least visible in the right foreground depicted notary with the marriage contracts. On this Thieme-Becker writes "... In 1761 he appeared with the village wedding (L'Accordée de Village) preserved in the Louvre, which unleashed a veritable storm of applause, and in which one found that display of rural virtue for which the taste of the time demanded ... The spirit of the epoch of Louis XVI, the "sediment" of pre-revolutionary France has not been so clearly expressed by any other visual artist of the time as by Greuze; therein lies the key to the secret of his success. ...". An interesting detail is mentioned by the artist encyclopedia Nagler (1837): "... Here [in Paris] it established its reputation through various paintings depicting social and domestic life, ... He never violated the good manners, and always faithful observer of the national-own he is also always witty, a highly estimable artist of his time. He knew how to draw correctly and to color vigorously, ... His forms are well chosen, and he knew how to lend grace and apt expression to the heads, and grace and daintiness to the entire composition, despite all its simplicity. But he often repeats himself in the physiognomies, as he usually took his beautiful, sentimental wife as a model. He needed such figures, since with him it was almost always aimed at the touching. ...". Greuze planned the painting as part of a group of four, which thematized the ages of man. However, the painter completed only two paintings in the series. The present motif was acquired by the French King Louis XVI in 1782 from the collection of the Marquis de Marigny for his own art collection. The second painting created at that time, "Le Paralytique servi par ses enfants [Eng: The Paralytic Served by His Children]", is today in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Finely captured with a pointed brush and loving details glazed genre painting in warm-toned color. Oil on canvas, 18th/19th century, unsigned. Our painting, which closely follows the Parisian work, has almost the same dimensions. It has been old doubled as well as restored and has a fine craquelure and minimal signs of age. Framed. Folded dimensions approx. 89 x 118 cm. Artist info: French portrait and genre painter, draftsman and etcher (1725 Tournus/Saône-et-Loire to 1805 Paris), initially destined to become an architect, finally from about 1745 painting student with Charles Grandon in Lyon, from about 1750 studied at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Paris with Charles Joseph Natoire, from the end of 1755, with a scholarship from the Royal Academy, Studienrei