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Notice the touches of red chalk at the eyelids, nose and lips and the white on her forehead, set inside the dark folds of her hood.
Greuze drew his mother, Claudine, when she was about seventy-five, in black, red and white chalk on gray-brown paper. In 1755, traveling to Italy, he had stopped to see his family in Tournus, and the Art Institute dates this sheet to 1775 from a related drawing of her embracing her son after twenty years apart. The drawing came to light only recently.
Black, red, and white chalk with stumping on brownish-gray laid paper, laid down on a ivory laid card · 37.7 × 29.3 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Portrait of the Artist's Mother
- Artist
- Jean-Baptiste Greuze French, 1725-1805
- Date
- 1775
- Medium
- Black, red, and white chalk with stumping on brownish-gray laid paper, laid down on a ivory laid card
- Dimensions
- 37.7 × 29.3 cm (14 7/8 × 11 9/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Celia and David Hilliard in honor of Suzanne Folds McCullagh
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.