An interior with a man playing a harp and a woman reading beside him; a study for the portrait of Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully

David Carritt was the first to suggest that this small grisaille -- which had previously been attributed to Boucher by Louis Réau -- might be a preparatory study by Greuze for the three-quarter-length portrait of the celebrated art collector Ange-Laurent La Live de Jully (1725-1779) that was exhibited in the Salon of 1759 and now hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Munhall, op. cit., no. 22); this reattribution was endorsed by Edgar Munhall who included the sketch in his retrospective exhibition of the artist's works in 1977. However, the attribution of the sketch to Greuze was subsequently questioned by Michael Levey (op. cit.), who regarded its association with the National Gallery portrait as unconvincing.

If the Lagerfeld grisaille does represent La Live, as Munhall believes, the female companion with whom he is portrayed is presumably his sister-in-law, Louise-Florence Petronille de La Live d'Epinay (1726-1783), the writer and salon hostess; certainly, she could not be Mme. de La Live, as the collector's first wife had died in 1752 -- several years before he met Greuze -- and he remarried only in 1762, three years after the Salon portrait was exhibited.

For a biography of La Live de Jully, see C.B. Bailey, Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully, New York, 1988; for a study of Madame d'Epinay, see F. Steegmuller, A Woman, a Man, and Two Kingdoms, New York, 1991.

We are grateful to Edgar Munhall for providing the information in this entry and for reaffirming his attribution of the present painting to Greuze (verbal communication, 5 February 2000).