The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 23, 2024
Head of a Young Woman
c. 1785
Location: not on view
Description
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.- [Sotheby-Parke-Bernet, London (27 April 1977), 16, no. 40, repr. on p. 62]; purchased in 1976.
- Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001. Referenced: cat. no. 12, p. 34-35, Reproduced: p. 35
- 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).
- {{cite web|title=Head of a Young Woman|url=false|author=Jean-Baptiste Greuze|year=c. 1785|access-date=23 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2008.354