Head of a Young Girl in a Bonnet

3 February 1759

Marries Anne-Gabrielle Babuti

Greuze marries Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, daughter of François Babuti, a bookseller on the Quai des Augustins; he will paint his father-in-law’s portrait in 1761.

16 avril 1762

Daughter born: Anna-Geneviève Greuze

1763

The Paralytic and the triumph of the Salon of 1763

Greuze exhibits at the Salons of 1759, 1761 and 1763 with growing success; the high point is The Paralytic (1763), which immediately wins unheard-of fame. The painting is bought by Empress Catherine II on the recommendation of Diderot, one of its most passionate admirers.

1765

The Salon of 1765: thirteen paintings and the height of his fame

At the Salon Greuze is represented by thirteen works, among them Young Girl Weeping for Her Dead Bird, The Good Mother, The Bad Son Punished and The Father’s Curse (the last two now in the Louvre); this is the zenith of his fame. He continues his series of pictures on upbringing and the relations between fathers and children, one of the great questions of the Enlightenment.

1769

Admitted to the Academy only as a genre painter

Wishing to be received as a history painter, Greuze presents the canvas Septimius Severus and Caracalla, exhibited beside his portrait of Jeaurat and the Little Girl with a Black Dog, and suffers a clear fiasco. The Academy accepts him, but only as a genre painter; the director says it respects his former excellent works but has “shut her eyes” to this unworthy canvas.

1769–1804

The quarrel with the Academy and his withdrawal from the Salons

Greatly incensed by the director’s words, Greuze quarrels with his confrères and ceases to exhibit until 1804, when the Revolution had thrown open the doors of the Academy to all the world.