The painter's life, like that of his fellow-Burgundian, Prudhon, fell short of happiness. Friction with the authorities of the Academy, and the merited failure of his classical work, "The Emperor Severus and Caracalla"—the very title calls up a smile, when we think of it in connection with the painter of "La Cruche Cassée"—caused him to cease exhibiting at the Salon, until the Revolution had opened the way for all painters. Yet the apparent failure was a blessing in disguise; it taught him his limitations, and brought him back from the stilted manner of his time, to the call of individual genius, and the freshness of nature.
He had other troubles; not the least of which was an ill-chosen wife. Mdlle Babuti, whose charming face he has reproduced on so many canvasses, was not so easy to live with as her picture, perhaps idealized by the painter, would lead us to believe; and Greuze himself lacked that touch of philosophy which would have counterbalanced his natural sprightliness of character. Finally came the crowning disaster, the Revolution, that robbed him of nearly all he possessed; so that, though the Convention gave him lodgings in the vacant chambers at the Louvre, he died in complete poverty. Shortly before his death, he remarked to his friend, Barthélemy:
"At my funeral you will be the poor man's dog."
It is said that Napoleon, hearing of the painter's wretched end, said: "If I had known his situation, I would have given him a Sèvres vase full of gold, in payment for all his cruches cassées."[134]
We need not, in these pages, discuss Greuze's art; but we may recall its best feature. Though his manner sometimes lays him open to the charge of being merely pretty and graceful, to the exclusion of greater qualities, we must not forget that he was one of the first who brought men back to nature—at a time when nature was everywhere forgotten—and reminded them, beautifully, that the simple incidents of village life, the small joys and sorrows that swell the breast of the rustic maid over the broken jug, or the welcome home of her lover, are not less elementally joyful or tragic, not less worthy the attention and sympathy of the true artist, than scenes of court and throne, and kindred emotions that, by the caprice of chance, swell the breasts of kings and decide the destinies of nations.
The idyllic and pastoral effects of Greuze's art, harmonize well with the unpretentiousness of the town of Tournus, and also with one of its most delightful features, the meadow-walks that border the Saône.
Here, at sunset, when you have gazed your fill at the mysterious towers of the abbey, rising above the roofs of the town, you may turn to watch the opalesque lights in the quivering water, that, doubling in its mirror the line of distant poplars, slides between reedy banks, between wide stretches of green pasture, where the pale herds browse. Scarcely a sound breaks the stillness; only, from time to time, comes the chance cry of a roystering Sunday youth, from a meadow far away floats the lowing of distant cattle, from the path the heavy tramp of an aged peasant, homeward-bound, bending beneath the weight of his spade.
