Jean Baptiste Greuze was a French painter best known for his portraits, genre scenes, and history paintings. Greuze’s work was known for having sentimental and sometimes titillating subject matter, as well as for its formal combination of Rococo and Dutch Realist styles. Born on August 21, 1725 in Tournus, France, Greuze studied with Charles Grandon in Lyon and later at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris. He would go on to apply to be a member of the Académie in Paris with mixed success, having applied with history paintings but only granted acceptance as a genre painter. Ultimately, Greuze’s marriage proved to be his downfall, since his wife both cheated on him and embezzled his money before their divorce. By the end of his life, Greuze, whose work had commanded some of the highest prices in France during the 1760s and 1770s, was nearly bankrupt. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Louvre Museum in Paris, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. Greuze died on March 4, 1805 in Paris, France.