Girl with a Doll

1750

Follows Grandon to Paris

Greuze’s father opposed his becoming a painter, but the Lyon portraitist Charles Grandon persuaded him to give way, and the youth became Grandon’s pupil in Lyon; in 1750 he follows his teacher to Paris. At the Royal Academy he studies under Charles-Joseph Natoire, but the two do not get on.

1750–1755

His first picture is taken for someone else’s work

A provincial who has settled in Paris at twenty-five, Greuze draws from the live model at the Royal Academy’s school without attracting his teachers’ attention; when he produces his first picture, The Father of a Family Explaining the Bible to His Children, its authorship is called into question.

1755

The Deceived Blind Man brings him into the Academy

Greuze exhibits The Deceived Blind Man; presented by the sculptor Pigalle, he is immediately accepted by the Academy as an agréé. He also enjoys the support of the well-known connoisseur La Live de Jully, brother-in-law of Madame d’Épinay.

1755–1757

To Italy with Abbé Gougenot

Towards the close of 1755 Greuze leaves for Italy with Abbé Louis Gougenot, a student of mythology and allegory whom the Academy elected an honorary member during the journey; he undertook it probably to silence those who taxed him with ignorance of great models of style. The trip did more harm than good: the Italian subjects that made up all his contributions to the Salon of 1757 showed he had been put on a false track, and he soon returned to the source of his first inspiration.

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.