Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 'A Girl', about 1765-80

A young girl in three-quarters view looks up and out of the picture to the left. Her right arm is raised as though reaching for something, while her left arm is by her side. Her brown hair is pulled back from her face with a blue ribbon, then plaited and twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. She wears a white muslin dress, which Greuze paints in broad, confident brushstrokes. Her transparent shawl, known as a fichu, covers one shoulder but has fallen off the other, with her dress. The dress is only loosely held up over the girl’s chest, an effect enhanced by her bodice having come undone. There was a fashion in France at the time for casual loose-fitting white muslin dresses and for clothes to be worn ‘naturally’. The girl is set, like many of Greuze’s single female figures, against a blank grey background. The palette, dominated by shades of white and grey, is warmed by the rose shades of her cheeks, lips and ear.

Greuze’s naturalistic and convincing depiction of the little girl might lead us to think this is an actual portrait. However, her expressionless face and upward gaze to the left of the picture is a format Greuze repeated again and again, as for example in his Bust of a Young Girl, probably about 1780 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon). The picture may look like a portrait but is probably a genre painting – an image of a type.

The painting entered the National Gallery collection as part of the Wynn Ellis bequest in 1876 and became popular as soon as it was displayed. In 1878 and 1879 it was the second most frequently copied old master painting in the entire Gallery, and in 1881 it was the first. This explains why there are so many anonymous copies after it.

In 1972 the novelist and art historian Anita Brookner saw in such pictures ‘a pornographic twist which he [Greuze] knew was popular’. She suggested that the single heads of girls came about when Greuze abandoned a larger multi-figure genre painting or wanted to make money quickly. However, it is unlikely that this painting is a fragment or study for a larger work. As well as other paintings, Greuze also made a number of drawn head studies with similar compositions, such as the red chalk drawing of the Head of a Young Girl now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. It is only recently that Greuze’s images of girls have been viewed more positively again.