A comprehensive exhibition at Paris's Petit Palais is bringing renewed attention to Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a painter who dominated 18th-century French art salons but has since faded from popular recognition. "Jean-Baptiste Greuze: Childhood in Light" runs through January 25, 2026, marking the 300th anniversary of the artist's birth in 1725.
"He is the most famous, most talented, and most adventurous painter of the 18th century," declares Annick Lemoine, museum director and co-curator of the exhibition. "He is also an engaged painter, a rebel." Born in Tournus, a small Burgundian town, Greuze has become largely misunderstood, unloved, and sometimes ridiculed in modern times, despite his extraordinary virtuosity and keen social vision that merits his return to museum walls.
During his heyday, Greuze was a superstar of the art world. At the 18th century's premier contemporary art venue - the Royal Academy of Painting's salon - Greuze was courted by the greatest collectors and praised by critics in the Louvre's galleries. As the exhibition catalog notes, "there wasn't a Parisian who didn't know his name." His friend, Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot, famously said of him: "Greuze creates morality through painting."
Yuriko Jackall, who traveled from Boston to co-curate the exhibition, explains Greuze's exceptional abilities: "He was one of the great technicians of his era, someone who could paint with a refinement and sensitivity that was truly above others. He was as gifted at drawing as he was at painting." However, his arrogance, vanity, and opposition to academicism gradually led to his disappearance from public favor and the art market.
Despite falling into obscurity and financial ruin, Greuze remained defiant until his death in 1805, declaring: "I have lost everything except talent and courage." His story raises eternal questions about judgment, criticism, and the fickle nature of success and fashion in the art world.
Greuze's specialty was depicting childhood, a theme that held both artistic and personal significance. He delighted in drawing and painting his own children, the children of friends and patrons, and sometimes strangers. The early galleries of the Petit Palais showcase melancholic gazes, childish dreamers, and defiant or anxious eyes, rendered with minimal composition and studio lighting that creates a gallery of life's beginnings.
This focus on childhood was far from innocent. Following in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Condorcet, and his friend Diderot, Greuze sought to impose a political vision of childhood. Books often appear in his compositions, symbolizing education and the Enlightenment's emphasis on learning.
"The artist was truly engaged with the issues of his time," Jackall explains. "This was the era when people discovered that a child wasn't something 'unfinished,' but a complete being in society who needed to be prepared with the right tools to become a full member of society and protected from all the dangers surrounding young people." The Enlightenment ideals found their place on canvas through Greuze's genius palette and brushwork.
Perhaps most striking is the exhibition's final section, titled "Lost Innocence and Broken Destinies," which reveals Greuze's remarkably modern sensibilities. The centerpiece is a large-format painting in soft, pastel tones depicting a porcelain doll-like figure with an empty gaze. Her hands attempt to hide the outrage suffered, her lower abdomen bears the trauma, and the fabric draped over her breast is torn in breathtaking detail. Withered flowers and a broken pitcher spilling water complete the scene - in 18th-century painter symbolism, the broken pitcher represented the loss of virginity.
The painting, created in 1771, unmistakably depicts a young woman who has suffered rape, rendered through the painter's brush and vision. The modernity of Greuze's perspective is startling to contemporary viewers - one might almost apply the MeToo movement's sensibilities to this 18th-century artist's work. Accompanying studies titled "The Dishonest Proposition" show red chalk and black stone drawings that further support this interpretation.
Since the Renaissance, the theme of elderly men as victims of young women's venality was common in art. Greuze rejected this narrative, instead showing aggression by a lecherous older man. This revolutionary and engaged approach reveals the undercurrent of violence that permeates Greuze's painting.
Jackall concludes about the artist's relevance: "The fact that an artist from a moment that might seem as distant as French rococo could speak to these issues - I think that's all the modernity, all the originality." The exhibition demonstrates how this forgotten master's work resonates powerfully with contemporary concerns about childhood, education, social justice, and gender-based violence.
The Petit Palais exhibition, located at avenue Winston-Churchill in Paris's 8th arrondissement, offers full accessibility for visitors with disabilities. Admission is 14 euros for adults, 12 euros reduced rate, and free for visitors under 18. The comprehensive retrospective provides an opportunity to reassess and rehabilitate an artist whose technical mastery and social consciousness deserve recognition alongside his 18th-century contemporaries.
