A Girl
- Artist: Jean-Baptiste Greuze
- Date: about 1800
- Medium: oil on wood
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
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About this artwork
This is "A Girl" painted in the French style by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. The painting depicts a young woman in a dark woody landscape, gathered shawl about her head, but revealing her left breast as she doesn't seem to have noticed it had fallen down. Her soft brown wavy hair is tied with a pink ribbon and her large glistening eyes give her a sensuous appearance.
Greauze creates a deliberately ambiguous image, blurring the line between youth and maturity, innocence and sensuality. He's known for painting expressive heads of young girls, often wearing veils or similar headscarves. The style in this painting is typical of his work, with areas of thick paint on her sleeve and the modelling of the girl's face.
The inclusion of a tree and foliage suggests it was painted around 1800, which would be considered late for Greuze's career. His use of mahogany panels is also characteristic of his style, as he often used them for paintings of girls' heads. The painting was extremely popular when it first went on view at the National Gallery in 1847 and was frequently copied in later years.
See it in person
A Girl hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
