Greuze's industry was now very great, and in 1761 there was exhibited one more of his greater triumphs, Un Mariage à l'instant où le Père de l'accordée delivre la dot à son gendre, a picture which created another sensation in Paris. It was unfinished when the Salon of that year was opened, and was hung only during the last few days of the exhibition. But all through these days people gathered round it with the same avidity with which they had elbowed one another for a peep at Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants.
During the next two years Greuze painted portraits and heads of children, and the year 1769 is notable because of his unhappy attempt to become a member of the Academy as an historical painter. He had, as we have seen, been made agréé, but he had not yet complied with the rule that required each member to provide the Academy with one of his pictures. The picture he now submitted bore the sufficiently comprehensive title of Septime-Sévère reprochant à son fils Caracalla d'avoir attenté à sa vie dans les défilés d'Ecosse et lui disant:—Si tu désires ma mort, ordonne à Papinien de me la donner. The members of the Academy assembled, and the picture was placed upon an easel that they might examine it, while Greuze awaited their verdict in another room. In an hour the artist was admitted.
"Monsieur Greuze," said the director, "the Academy receives you; come forward and take the oath." When this ceremony had been completed the director continued, "You have been received; but it is as a painter of genre. The Academy has considered your former productions, which are excellent, but it has closed its eyes upon this picture, which is worthy neither of the Academy nor of you."
Greuze was astounded and disappointed; and he commenced to stammer out a confused defence of the picture, the worst probably that he ever painted. Then Lagrenée, taking a pencil from one of his pockets, pointed out some of the mistakes in drawing on the canvas. Greuze, cut to the heart, went away, and continued a defence of his picture in the newspapers.
One of the letters which Greuze sent to the public journals is an interesting revelation of how little of what is understood now as art went to the making of an historical painting. Greuze wrote:
"In the continuation of your comments upon the pictures exhibited at the Salon in the last number of your journal you have been unjust towards me upon two points; and as an honourable man you would no doubt wish to remove these injustices in your next issue. In the first place, instead of treating me as you have treated the other artists, my confrères, to whom you have offered, in a few lines, the tribute of commendation which they have merited, you have gone out of your way to discuss, with the public, how, according to your opinion, Poussin would have painted the same subject. I do not doubt, sir, that Poussin, of the same subject, would have made a sublime work; but to a certainty he would have painted a very different picture from the one which you have imagined. I must ask you to believe that I have studied, as carefully as you have been able to study, the works of that great man, and I have, above all, sought to acquire the art of endowing my characters with dramatic expression. You have carried your views a long way, it is true, inasmuch as you have remarked that Poussin would have put the clasps of the cloaks upon the right side, while I have put that of the robe of Caracalla upon the left—surely a very grave error! But I do not surrender so easily concerning the character which you pretend that Poussin would have given to the Emperor. All the world knows that Severus was the most passionate, the most violent of men, and you would wish that when he says to his son, 'If thou desirest my death, order Papinian to kill me with that sword,' he should, in my picture, have an air as calm and as tranquil as Solomon had in similar circumstances. I ask all sensible men to judge whether that was or was not the expression which should have been put on the face of that redoubtable Emperor.
"Another injustice, much greater still, is that, after you had endeavoured to discover how Poussin would have treated this subject, you have assumed that I had the idea to paint Geta, the brother of Caracalla, in the personage that I have placed behind Papinian. First of all, Geta was not present at that scene; it was Castor the chamberlain, one of the most faithful servants of Severus. In the second place, in supposing gratuitously, as you have done, that I had the design to represent Geta, you would have been right to have reproached me if I had painted him too old, because he was the younger brother of Caracalla. Thirdly, I should still have been wrong if I had not painted him in his armour. You see, sir, what absurdities you have attributed to me in order that you might indulge your love of criticism. I believe you to be a man too honest to refuse me the satisfaction of making this letter public in your journal. It is due to me to be allowed to explain my own picture and to correct the interpretation which you have given to it without consulting me and without consulting history.
"Do you wish to discourage an artist who sacrifices all to merit the favours with which the public has so far honoured him? Why, upon my first essay, attack me so openly? This is to me a new kind of painting, but it is one in which I flatter myself that I shall become perfect as time goes on. Why compare me alone, amongst all my confrères, to the most learned painter of the French school? If you have done this to indulge me, you have not done it happily, for I can find nothing in all that article but a marked design to annoy me. Nor shall I be able to recognise any other than that design—a most unworthy one in a writer who ought to be impartial—until I have seen your willingness to print my letter in your journal."