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A Farmer Entrusting the Plow to His Son
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A Farmer Entrusting the Plow to His Son

Medium

Brush and gray wash, over graphite. Framing lines in pen and brown ink. Squared in graphite. Verso of mount: figure in brush and gray wash.

Dimensions

15 7/16 x 19 1/2 in. (39.2 x 49.5 cm)

Collection

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Credit

Purchase, Van Truex Day Fund, 1983

Classification

Drawings

Department

Drawings and Prints

Rights

Public Domain

About Jean-Baptiste Greuze

1725–1805France

Greuze's paintings are typical for his time and place in that he used clear, bright colors, with subjects exhibiting rather light attitude of eighteenth-century painting. However, he was innovative in introducing a Dutch-influenced realism into French genre painting and portraiture. Through vivid facial expressions and dramatic gestures, Greuze's moralizing paintings exemplified the new idea that painting should relate to life.