Getty Museum
Head of an Old Man
Creator
Jean-Baptiste GreuzeFrench Artist · 1725–1805
All works by this person →> Courage, my friend Greuze, go ahead and moralize with your paintbrush, and always continue in this manner! > > --Denis Diderot After training in Lyon, Jean-Baptiste Greuze arrived in Paris in 1750, where he sporadically attended the Académie Royale. His 1755 Salon debut was a triumph, but the acclamation turned his head. He antagonized everyone, including fellow artists, which later proved disas
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1755
- Medium
- Red chalk
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
In Jean-Baptiste Greuze's moralizing narrative paintings, facial expression and gesture were key to telling the story, and his contemporaries greatly admired his skills. In drawn studies such as this one, he departed from the high drama of his paintings and captured his sitter's individual character with sympathy and humility. A consummate draftsman, Greuze made many vivid, expressive, large-scale head studies in chalk, which he did not necessarily intend for specific paintings; sometimes they were later engraved and distributed as prints. This drawing may be a study for the old man seated at the right of the painting *L'Aveugle trompé* in Moscow's Pushkin Museum.
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