GREUZE, Jean-Baptiste
(b. 1725, Tournus, d. 1805, Paris)

The Dead Bird

1800
Oil on canvas, 68 x 55 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

In the last years of Greuze's career, his moralising, dramatic genre scenes and severe manner had become unfashionable. With The Dead Bird he returned to a lighter, pleasing vein like that of The Broken Pitcher - a type that was more prized by his contemporaries.