Jean-Baptiste Greuze (born 1725) was a French portrait and genre painter who was born in, Tournus, France. He initiated a mid-18th-century vogue for moralizing and sentimental anecdotes in paintings. He studied first at Lyon before he joined the Royal Academy in Paris. His first exhibition was in 1755 at the Salon. It was a big success with his piece of Father Reading the Bible to His Children winning the hearts of many viewers. Although his attention by then was fixed on a less-pompous type of genre painting in which the influence of the Dutch masters of the 17th century is apparent, the encouraging attention he received turned his head and established the lines of his future career.
Greuze left for Italy in 1755 but remained resistant to the Italian painting influence. In 1759 he met Denis Diderot, who encouraged his inclination toward sensational genre. Greuze reached new heights of popular acclaim in the 1760s with his works such as The Prodigal Son, The Father’s Curse, and The Village Betrothal. In 1769 he submitted a large, rather dreary historical painting, titled Septimius Severus Reproaching Caracalla to the Salon. Greuze hoped this artwork would help him in getting admitted to the academy as a history painter. However, the academy only admitted him to membership as a genre painter. Greuze became so resentful that he decided to only exhibit his works to the public in his own studio for the 30 years that followed. In addition to moralizing genre, Greuze painted young girls in poses of calculated disarray and feigned innocence.
