La jeune fille au panier

Greuze painted this young girl with a basket during his mature period in the 1770s, when he had shifted from ambitious history paintings to the sentimental genre heads that became his commercial mainstay. These têtes d'expression, depicting idealized young women in states of innocence or reverie, were enormously popular with collectors and generated steady income after his failed bid for history painter status at the Académie in 1769. Greuze's heads of young women occupied an ambiguous moral position in 18th-century viewing culture: presented as studies of innocence or modesty, their disheveled hair and parted lips carried unmistakable erotic undertones.

Soft, luminous flesh tones modeled with delicate glazes characterize Greuze's technique, with loose brushwork in the costume contrasting the careful rendering of the face.