Agneau chéri

A mysterious and poignant painting, L’Agneau chéri (‘The Beloved Lamb’) is one of the finest from the latter years of Greuze’s career. Likely a theme of the artist’s invention, rather than a Biblical or literary story, it nevertheless evokes an ancient world in its classical setting and costumes. In it, a barefoot, seated young woman resting her head in her hands watches an approaching boy who carries a lamb in his arms; a sheep and resting hound flank them. The pensive, solemn mood of the picture may suggest we are witnessing the prelude to a pagan sacrifice, although the sacrificial lamb could also allude to the story of Christ.

As his career progressed, Greuze increasingly employed the narrative devises of history painting in his genre scenes as a means of engaging the viewer more deeply. In his final decades, the artist created several mysterious and profoundly felt paintings of classical and vaguely allegorizing subject matter – hybrids of history, mythology and genre painting – that seem to have held personal meaning for him. Among these, the most famous are Innocence Carried Off by Cupid (1786; Louvre, Paris) and Psyche Crowning Cupid (circa 1785; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), although to this group must be added the present picture, which was only rediscovered in 2000.

The late Edgar Munhall dated the present painting to circa 1785 (private communication), the same moment to which he and other scholars have dated Psyche Crowing Cupid. The cold tonalities and soft, brushy handling of paint in that work is identical in manner to that in L’Agneau chéri, and it is possible – though not certain – that both paintings were left unfinished. It is also possible that the present painting was included in the group of ‘ten large- and medium-sized paintings, sketches of mythological and historical subjects’ recorded in Greuze’s studio at the time of his death in March 1805. Munhall, who saw the painting in person and confirmed its attribution, identified another painting by the artist in the Zanesville Art Center, Zanesville, OH, which depicts the same subject.