Granted village

Granted Village is a table of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (92 X 117 cm) presented to the Art gallery of 1761, where it accepted a unanimously eulogistic reception on behalf of criticisms, in particular on behalf of Diderot. It is about the first realization of a type of painting in which Greuze was to be illustrated on several occasions thereafter: the moral Painting.
This table is preserved at the Musée of Louvre, in Paris.

The subject

The subject of the table appears a village interior of, where one sees a father paying the dowry of his daughter with been engaged of this one, promised in marriage which listens to with attention the remarks that the old man holds.

Been engaged as for it the head, a last arm below that of her engaged couple drops moderately, of which it seems not to dare to take the hand, that it effleure only. Its other hand is held by his/her mother in tears, as is in tears his/her young sister, who passed an arm around her neck. His/her older sister (unless it isn't about a maidservant?), pressed on the file of the armchair where the father sat, on the other hand, contemplates the scene with a spite undoubtedly due to the jealousy.

A notary, sitted in bottom on the right, draws up the marriage contract, while with the other end of the table, two maidservants contemplate the scène.
The family counts three other children, in low age, of which only one is interested in the scene (that which is upright behind the mother): the little girl gives bread to a hen and her chicks, while a little boy plays with the papers spread out in front of the table over which writes the notary.

With the Art gallery of 1761

Granted village was one of the six tables presented by Greuze to this living room. The painter had delayed the presentation of it (it was visible only during the last weeks of the living room), in order to excite the curiosity of the public. This strategy was paying: one pressed oneself in mass in front of the table, so much so that Diderot writes that it could approach it only with difficulties.

The enthusiasm of the public and the critic for this work was unanimous: it “astonished and conquered from the start by the power of its narrative nature, its wealth of realistic details and the force with which it table leads the spectator to a total comprehension of the scene. ”

Diderot, returning account with Grimm of what he had seen with the living room did not dry up either praises: the figures are connected, observed it, and “are while ondoyant and pyramidant. ” But this rigorous construction however gives an impression of naturalness, and does not seem desired nor having been even thought by the artist.

The characters illustrated in the table are credible. Been engaged, for example, whose expression seems perfectly balanced, pulled about between his/her parents and her engaged couple: “With its been engaged More, and it had not been rather decent; more with his/her father or his mother, and it had been false. ”

In this report, Diderot informed however its correspondent of some light reserves: thus, the head of the father is the same one as that which it painted for two other tables (the “paralytic one”, and the Father explaining the Bible with its children ), “or at least they are three brothers with great outdoors of family. ” Which more is, one wonders whether the character who is held upright behind the father is well the older sister, or if it is about a maidservant: “the majority of those which look at the table, take it for a maidservant and the others are perplexed” (Grimm was not to agree with Diderot on this point: according to him, the spectator could not be mistaken there: it is indeed the older sister.)

Lastly, Diderot allotted to “a woman of much of spirit” the remark according to which the characters of the table would be, to some extent of them (the father, promised in marriage and the notary), of country truths, but that the other characters would rather find their model in “the market of Paris. ”

Nevertheless, the philosopher concluded, these criticisms were only “trifles”, and it was better “extasier in front of a piece which presents beauties on all sides”, and which was probably what Greuze until had made there of better.

Granted village and moral painting

What Diderot had particularly appreciated in this table, and which it was to appreciate in a certain number of following tables ( Filial devotion , the ungrateful Son and the Son punished …), it was the fact that the painter kept in mind, not to appear “the vice and the defect”, but “to contribute to touch us to inform us, to correct us and to invite us to the virtue. ” By there, Greuze joined one of the wishes expressed by the author of the Pensées detached on painting, the sculpture, architecture and poetry : to make so that painting contributes to moral education by the setting in scene of the virtue: I would sacrifice readily the pleasure of seeing beautiful nudities, wrote Diderot, if I could hasten the moment when more decent painting and the sculpture and more morals will think of contributing with the other fine arts to inspire the virtue and to purify manners. Greuze was thus, according to Diderot, the first to have given a beginning of realization to this program, which brought painting closer to the dramatic arts and narrative, which pursued similar goals; “the first which was warned to give manners to art and to connect events according to which it would be easy to make a novel. ”

Success and posterity

Like giving reason to Diderot, the table of Greuze was as of the end of the year 1761 to be used as model for a literary work: a tale of the Abbot Aubert precisely entitled Granted village (in which the table was described besides.) In addition, the Italian actors were to make of it an alive table presented at the time of the Noces of Harlequin .

Very many copies of the table, reproducing the totality of its composition or the detached figures transfer the day at the XIXe century. That also, Diderot, had anticipated it: he indeed concluded his report with Grimm by indicating that “this kind of painting is particularly intended to be copied. ”

Preparatory drawings

Greuze carried out several preparatory drawings for this work:

an overall composition is preserved at the palate of the Art schools of the town of Paris (Petit Palais.)
Another composition overall, less thorough was sold by the Parisian antique dealer Maurice Ségoura.
a study with blood of the notary passed on sale to Sotheby' S to Monaco.

The interest of the two overall drawings is to show the evolution of the installation of the characters, and the progression of the character at the bottom, climbing, cut in final work, with middle height in the drawing of the Petit Palais.

Bibliography used

Denis Diderot, Living room of 1765 , Hermann, Paris, 1984
Denis Diderot, Hero and martyrs , Hermann, Paris, 1995
Denis Diderot, Tests on painting, Living rooms of 1759,1761,1763 , Hermann, Paris, 2007
Edgar Munhall , Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1728-1805 , catalogs exposure organized by Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1977

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