Provenance

Mme. Caroline Greuze (1762-1842), daughter of the artist, (her sale:  Paris, 25-6 January 1843, lot 16, as Le Désespoir amoreux:  "Les petits Amours voltigent autour d'une femme couchée qui étend les bras pour les saisirs" [12.5 ff])

Marquis Charles de Valori (1820-1883), Paris

Anonymous sale:  Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 12 December 1958, lot 44 (as Sarabande d’amours survolant une femme couchée)

W. M. Brady & Co., New York

Private collection, New York

Literature

J. Martin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné de Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Paris, 1908, cat. no. 88

Edgar Munhall has suggested that this fresh and lively sheet, executed in brush and wash with pen and ink, probably dates from the late 1770s.  It may have been intended as a pendant to the drawing in lot 17 in Caroline Greuze’s sale in 1843, L’Arbre des amours (“De petits amours innombrables grimpent au tronc et s’accrchent aux branches.  Les uns voltigent autour, les autres tombent et se culbutent au pied de l’arbre”), also purchased by the marquis de Valori (for 18.5ff; current location unknown).

Entitled Le Désespoir amoureux and showing a reclining female figure reaching up and grasping unsuccessfully for the cupids hovering above her, our drawing appears to be an allegory of despairing or unrequited love.  It is similar in technique and allegorical subject matter to two other drawings executed by Greuze in the late 1770s, The Boat of Happiness (Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen)¹ and The Boat of Misfortune (Horvitz collection, Beverly Farms, Massachusetts).² These sheets are allegories of marital bliss and discord, The Boat of Happiness showing a loving couple happily rowing a boat with a cupid guiding one of the oars and their two children contentedly asleep in the stern.  The Boat of Misfortune, on the other hand, shows a boat about to go over a precipice, the husband struggling to prevent this catastrophe while his wife appears immovable, their two children fight in the stern, and cupid is taking leave from this scene of discord.  The drawings were intentionally autobiographical, illustrating Greuze’s own marital experience of initial happiness followed by later difficulties.³  His wife, Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, whom he married in 1759 and by whom he had two daughters, was both demanding and unfaithful.

The present sheet, drawn around the same time, is perhaps also an illustration of Greuze’s own frustration and disappointment in finding true and lasting love.  Its emotional intensity is typical of the artist, something he explored initially in his têtes d’expression and then in his genre paintings.