followers, which became well known not just in the print market but also in the writings of art critics,
particularly from the 1760s. The term “genre painting” itself was not formally defined until 1873, when
the English definition given was “a style of painting which depicts scenes and subjects of common life”
(Bailey, 2003, 3). Diderot (cited in Wrigley, 1993, 293) stated that such subjects demanded mere patience
and technical skill and little by way of genius or imagination: his main preoccupation remained with
history painting and its improvement. However, he adopted a more flexible attitude when he encountered
the bourgeois dramas of Greuze, who had been refused entry to the Académie royale as a history painter
and was instead received as a “genre painter.” Greuze’s paintings were often seen as a special category in
their own right, “paintings of morals” (Bailey, 2003, 4). One reviewer of the 1769 Salon wrote that
Greuze deserved to be called a “painter of sentiment” as the scenes he created were so “philosophical,
touching and novel” (Letter on the Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures at the Salon of the Louvre; or
Lettre sur l’exposition des ouvrages de peinture et de sculpture au Sallon du Louvre; cited in Barker,
2005, 9). The visual representation of feeling (sentiment) allowed the viewer to enter into an empathetic
relationship with the figures represented, thus allowing the kind of moral understanding generated in more
heroic mode in history paintings (Conisbee, 2007, 195). His paintings represented the lives and
households of gentleman farmers and the middle classes (Figure 5.8). Diderot felt particular works by
Greuze, such as his The Father Reading the Bible (Le père de famille lisant la Bible, 1755) were
particularly worthy of “history” (Barker, 2007, 111).
Greuze’s reception piece Septimius Severus and Caracalla (1769) was considered to pay too much
attention to naturalistic detail and a meticulous finish, and too little to classical idealization, to allow him
to be received as a history painter, in spite of the classical subject (Schieder, 2003, 60–62). There is
considerable evidence, however, that throughout the eighteenth century elements of genre painting (its
references to a private, common life; its naturalism) increasingly merged in a creative fashion with all the
other genres (Schieder, 2003, 60–77; Scott, 2003, 94–102). Chardin’s paintings of children engaged in
activities often seemed to conflate the conventions of portraiture and genre and conveyed, through
captions often added by those who later engraved them, significant moral messages, some hinting for
example at the status of children as “liminal” or potential adults. In art institutions and theory however an
overriding allegiance to idealizing history painting remained in place to the end of the century (Bailey,
2003, 4–5).
Genre paintings by innovatorartists such as Chardin and Greuze presented edifying scenes that could, in
some ways, serve the moralizing function previously ascribed to history paintings (Crow, 1985, 136–
174). This effect was particularly pertinent in the largerscale works by Greuze, which represented
family scenes on tragic themes such as sin and repentance (Figure 2.11). Paintings such as Chardin’s The
Scullery Maid (1738; see cover image), offered in a more elegant, native idiom the spectacle of everyday
virtues and sobriety previously admired in Dutch and Flemish genre paintings, which remained popular
throughout the century. Works by these French artists were popular with all sections of the artbuying
public until the end of the century, when they faded slightly from view due to renewed attempts to
reinvigorate the history genre. Genre paintings suited a Parisian culture of leisure and domesticity. Buyers
included those with more wealth than the modest bourgeois families these paintings represented (T.W.
Gaehtgens, 2003, 79–80). Between 1750 and 1790 there was an increasing number of references to them
in French exhibition catalogues, a reflection of their popularity with collectors and critics (Collins, 2003,
396–398). Throughout the century royal and aristocratic patrons commissioned genre paintings as much as
they did history, their lively interest demonstrated by a vogue for explanatory captions. Artists such as
Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, Greuze and Louis Léopold Boilly (1761–1845), benefited from this trend and
attracted buyers from an international market (Bailey, 2003, 13–18).