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About the Artwork
This female head relates to a finished drawing by Greuze called The Reconciliation, which shows the return of a husband to his wife after a domestic argument. The artist specialized in scenes of family life, depicted with high drama and theatrical gestures. From narrative scenes such as this, he would often make large red chalk drawings-close-ups in a sense-of the facial expressions of individual figures in the scene. This sheet relates to the head of the wife in The Reconciliation, who turns toward her husband entering at the right. Greuze created and sold such drawings as finished works of art. Like the drawing by Taraval on view nearby, and the sheets by Antoine Coypel and Edgar Degas also on view in this exhibition, this type of work is called an expressive head (tête d'expression), which has a rich tradition in French art.
Inscriptions
signed, in brown ink, lower right: Greuze
Provenance
[Sotheby-Parke-Bernet, London (27 April 1977), 16, no. 40, repr. on p. 62]; purchased in 1976.
Exhibition history
French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 26-October 28, 2001); Dahesh Museum of Art (February 19-May 18, 2002).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805)
- Date
- c. 1785
- Medium
- red chalk on white laid paper pasted down on heavy-weight gray paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 41 x 31.5 cm (16 1/8 x 12 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Bequest of Muriel Butkin
- Accession no.
- 2008.354
More by Jean-Baptiste Greuze in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00011562
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