Greuze

Alys Eyre MacklinProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 51K words
Chapters: 6

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Greuze by Alys Eyre MacklinAuthor: Macklin, Alys Eyre,Language: English, Class: ND: Fine Arts: Painting, Release Date: Feb 20, 2013

Editor's review

This is an English-language art biography of the French painter Greuze, a free e-book from Project Gutenberg. Concise in length, it serves as an accessible introduction to Greuze the man and his art. The book discusses his genre scenes and portraits, presenting both the tender brushwork with which he depicted bourgeois life and family morality and the tension between his later work and the tastes of his time. Readers can thereby trace one strand in the shift of eighteenth-century French painting from Rococo taste toward moral subjects. As a public-domain e-book, it is highly accessible, convenient to read on the go and to search, and especially suitable as supplementary reading before or after visiting a related exhibition or reading an art history textbook. Note that it is an older English-language biography, whose language and views bear the marks of its era; it is best read alongside contemporary art historical writing, as a lightweight entry point to the study of Greuze rather than a comprehensive or definitive account.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Beginning readers interested in eighteenth-century French painting and Greuze
Art students seeking supplementary English-language art history reading
Visitors preparing background knowledge before a related exhibition
Readers who enjoy public-domain e-books and fragmented reading

Not a good fit for

Readers who do not read English and prefer Chinese-language art monographs
Researchers who need detailed plates and high-resolution reproductions for comparison
Those seeking cutting-edge contemporary scholarship and full annotations

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the overall structure, then revisit relevant passages alongside images of Greuze's representative works.
Jot down the titles and dates of works mentioned while reading, for easy retrieval of the originals later.
Read in parallel with the corresponding chapters of a contemporary French art history textbook and compare differing views.
Use the e-book's search function to locate and closely read key passages by artist name and painting title.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English?

This is an English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with the main text in English. It is suitable for readers with some English reading ability who want to learn about Greuze; if you read only Chinese, it is advisable to find a Chinese art history work for comparison.

Does the book include illustrations of paintings?

The materials do not state whether there are illustrations; usually this kind of public-domain critical biography is mainly narrative text. When reading, it is advisable to have an art album on hand or search for Greuze's works on museum websites and view them alongside the text for a better effect.

Is this book suitable for use as an art history textbook?

It is better suited as light supplementary reading. As an older critical biography, its views and language bear the marks of the era in which it was written and it lacks contemporary scholarly annotation, so it is advisable to use it together with systematic art history textbooks and exhibition catalogues.

Comments

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About the author

Alys Eyre Macklin Author

Alys Eyre Macklin is an author about whom little is known; public information is limited, and her nationality, dates of birth and death, and personal history have not been reliably recorded. In the current catalogue she has only one work, Greuze. Judging from the title, the book concerns the French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze and belongs to the genre of art history and painting criticism. Works of this kind usually follow the painter's life, creative development and representative pictures, set them against their period, and assess formal features and subject matter. Macklin's writing may therefore be understood as a focused study of an individual artist, combining close attention to works with narrative. Although the available material does not allow a full picture of her, this book remains a useful reference for Chinese readers interested in Greuze and his painting.