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The Lady of Charity (French - La La Dame de charité) is a 1773 oil on canvas painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. It shows a wealthy lady encouraging her young daughter to give alms to a dying old man.[1]

Context

The 18th century is the great age of the Enlightenment. Greuze lived in a period of change, between the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

After artistic studies in Lyon then in Paris, Greuze imposes himself on the scene with his father explaining the Bible to his children. On his return from Rome, where he went to complete his training, his success was recognized. The French Academy therefore asked him to create a masterpiece for the next Salon of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Greuze chose to present Septimius Severus and Caracalla, but he only met with criticism contrary to his expectations. For the Academy, Greuze was "incapable of painting the passions or representing history with the desired nobility and grandeur". Frustrated, he no longer exhibited at the Salon. He retained the favor of the public and critics thanks to his portraits and engravings which he continued to present. He showed his talent by an excellent mastery of the pictorial space, a participation of each element which allowed an understanding of the canvas. Morality was omnipresent, the painter educated the viewer. Thus, a large part of Greuze's works illustrated the delights of virtue. It was in this precise context that he painted the Lady of Charity, which enjoyed immense success. This painting marked the advent of a sentimental and preaching genre that would survive until the end of the following century. This didactic work owes its success to the rise of a bourgeois moralist mentality which did not spare the noble class. Diderot, the famous writer, a great admirer of Greuze, described him as an artist of morality: “Here is our painter and mine, the first among us who thought of giving mores to art».[2]

References

На других языках

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- [en] The Lady Giving Charity

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[fr] La Dame de charité

La Dame de Charité est une huile sur toile réalisée par Jean-Baptiste Greuze en 1773. Ce tableau haut de 112 cm et d'une largeur de 146 cm a été acquis par le musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon en 1897. Cette œuvre représente un concept moral classique : le devoir de charité publique. Une dame de condition aisée incite sa fille à donner une bourse à un vieillard mourant. Cette thématique entre dans la mouvance du XVIIIe siècle. Greuze est le grand maître de la peinture de genre, peinture reprenant des scènes de vie quotidienne propice aux sujets moralisants.

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