Jean-Baptiste Greuze Essay

Jean-Baptiste Greuze was born in 1725. He was born into a middle-class family. Greuze then grew up to study painting in Lyon in the 1740’s beneath the popular portrait artist, Charles Grandon. He study with Grando for about ten years. In 1750 Greuze moved to Paris, he had gotten accepted the Royal Academy as a student. Then he was admitted as an Associate member of the Academy when he submitted a few of his painting. Which were A Father Reading the Bible to His Family, this painting shows an older family man having bible study or teaching his children about the bible at the dinner table. This painting represents the moral responsibility that parents teach their children about living by the bible and following the righteous path of god,
The Blind Man Deceived tells a dark story. About an old man who lost his sight. In the painting it seems as if he fell to his knees with a younger woman to his side and he’s holding her with his left hand while she in return is holding what appears to be a serving boy emerging from the cellar, who is so alarmed that he spills the pitcher of beer he was sent to get. The terrified young man staggers forward with his mouth open, the young woman watches the old man with an amused gaze, and finally, the main character proposes, with his unattractive and greyish face, that had he but eyes to see, he would not take kindly to the goings-on so painfully obvious to the viewer. The old man-whether aged husband or father-is tricked, and the youth led astray by the spotlight schemer in the middle. Greuze depicts the woman as a basic sexual aggressor and cheat, a predictive early idea for which his own wedded life would deliver frightening satisfaction.
The Sleeping Schoolboy Paintings depicts the innocents and the realism of a child learning until falling asleep. The sleeping school boy may be one of Greuze’s most famous paintings because of the how real he makes the painting look, and how well he shows the image of an everyday