Greuze has been credited with extending the emotional range of painting, in an age that was interested in expressing new areas of feeling. This simple head and shoulders portrait of a girl is one of the artist’s ‘Expression Studies’, designed to illustrate a particular emotional state.

He first attracted notice in 1755 when he exhibited a picture extolling the simple virtues of the poor at the Paris Salon. Greuze’s fame derived largely from the popularity of engraved copies of his paintings. Much of his money was embezzled by his wife, a former model whom he eventually divorced. After the French Revolution of 1789 he endured poverty and neglect. His death went unnoticed by the art world, which had found new heroes in those artists who revived the Classical style.