Women and Children Mourning a Dead Man
Medium
Pen and brown ink, and brush and gray and brown wash, with graphite, on cream laid paper, laid down on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
24.9 × 32.4 cm (9 13/16 × 12 13/16 in.)
Classification
ink or chalk wash
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
65825
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In the third quarter of the 18th century, a young generation of artists developed a sober, almost classicizing reaction to the artificial frivolities of artists like François Boucher. Greuze depicted scenes from daily life that were intended to be inspirational or morally uplifting. This drawing is a study for his painting of 1778 (now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris) showing the errant son who has returned home just as his father has died.
About the Artist
Jean Baptiste Greuze · 1725–1805
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 ...