Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Jean-Baptiste Greuze was born in Tournus (Burgundy) in 1725. After first training in Lyon around 1745, he moved to Paris, where he was admitted into the Academy in 1755 and made his first appearance at the Salon in the same year. As an artist he patterned himself after the Netherlandish genre painters of the seventeenth century, but also after contemporary official painting, which led to conflicts. At the same time, he took an interest in the study of the great masters and southern folk life during his sojourn in Rome from 1755 to 1757, which led to the development of a highly personal artistic idiom with a moral component. He died in Paris in 1805.