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Lot Essay
This is a study for the spaniel depicted at left in Greuze’s painting of 1776-1779 The drunken cobbler in the Portland Art Museum (fig. 1; see Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1725-1805, exhib. cat., Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, San Francisco, Legion of Honor, and Dijon, Musée des beaux-arts, 1976-1977, no. 94, ill.). The drunkard, looking haggard, is back home in a frugal-looking interior. His children, poorly dressed and barefoot, and his wife seem to look at him with sadness and concern. The subject of the painting is a moralizing depiction of the evils of drunkenness.
Dogs, and especially spaniels, play an important role in Greuze's compositions and are often present in his paintings. Although dogs often have a symbolic meaning in the artist's paintings - images of fidelity, of attentive and protective care - it seems that the artist had a real affection for them and the way he represented them in his works demonstrates his profound knowledge of their character, anatomy, movements and postures.
A counterproof of this drawing is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon, bequest of Jean Gigoux (inv. D.945).
Fig. 1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The drunken cobbler. Portland Art Museum, Portland.
Dogs, and especially spaniels, play an important role in Greuze's compositions and are often present in his paintings. Although dogs often have a symbolic meaning in the artist's paintings - images of fidelity, of attentive and protective care - it seems that the artist had a real affection for them and the way he represented them in his works demonstrates his profound knowledge of their character, anatomy, movements and postures.
A counterproof of this drawing is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon, bequest of Jean Gigoux (inv. D.945).
Fig. 1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The drunken cobbler. Portland Art Museum, Portland.