Greuze's industry was abnormal. As a worker he seemed indefatigable. He was absorbed in his art, putting all his soul and brains into his pictures, and seeming to live for his work, and for no other thing.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WORK
There is so little variety in the works of Greuze that if one divides them into two main classes, nearly all his pictures, with the exception of the portraits, may be placed in one or other of these two divisions. In one class there are his genre pictures, containing as a rule many figures; and then, better known than these, and of greater merit, are his single heads of girls and boys, which constitute the other principal category.
His first great success was achieved with his picture of the genre class, Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants, and this book contains an illustration from another popular work of this sort called L'Accordée de Village. A section of this volume explains the relative position of Greuze in the history of art, and reasons are given which account for the great acclamation with which this and similar works were received in Paris when first they were exhibited. Meanwhile we will consider the intrinsic merits of these pictures without reference to the novelty of their appearance—an appearance in which a number of adventitious circumstances are involved.
THE VILLAGE BRIDE.
(L'Accordée de Village.)