1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze is generally said to have formed his own talent; at an early age his inclinations, though thwarted by his father, were encouraged by a Lyonnese artist named Grandon, or Grondom, who enjoyed during his lifetime considerable reputation as a portrait-painter.
In 1755 Jean-Baptiste Greuze exhibited his Aveugle trompe, upon which, presented by Pigalle the sculptor, he was immediately agree by the Academy.
Gougenot had some acquaintance with the arts, and was highly valued by the Academicians, who, during his journey with Jean-Baptiste Greuze, elected him an honorary member of their body on account of his studies in mythology and allegory; his acquirements in these respects are said to have been largely utilized by them, but to Jean-Baptiste Greuze they were of doubtful advantage, and he lost rather than gained by this visit to Italy in Gougenot's company.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze had undertaken it probably in order to silence those who taxed him with ignorance of great models of style, but the Italian subjects which formed the entirety of his contributions to the Salon of 1757 showed that he had been put on a false track, and he speedily returned to the source of his first inspiration.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze wished to be received as a historical painter and produced a work which he intended to vindicate his right to despise his qualifications as a genre artist.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze had been in receipt of considerable wealth, which he had dissipated by extravagance and bad management so that during his closing years he was forced to solicit commissions which his enfeebled powers no longer enabled him to carry out with success.
Diderot, in Le Fils naturel and Pere de famille, tried to turn the vein of domestic drama to account on the stage; that which he tried and failed to do, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, in painting, achieved with extraordinary success, although his works, like the plays of Diderot, were affected by that very artificiality against which they protested.
The touch of melodramatic exaggeration which runs through them finds an apology in the firm and brilliant play of line, in the freshness and vigour of the flesh tints, in the enticing softness of expression, by the alluring air of health and youth, by the sensuous attractions, in short, with which Jean-Baptiste Greuze invests his lessons of bourgeois morality.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze was the father of painter Anna-Genevieve Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who was his pupil.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze is mentioned in the song " Green Carnation", Noel Coward's celebration of camp and queerness, from his 1929 operetta Bitter Sweet:.
In 2002, the first exhibition of Jean-Baptiste Greuze's drawings was held at The Frick Collection in New York.