The Guilty and Repentant Daughter (early 1770s): Art, History and Details

The Guilty and Repentant Daughter (early 1770s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This drawing belongs to a group of highly finished drawings created by Jean-Baptiste Greuze during the 1770s, many of which focused on family crises and were characterized by groups of figures set in shallow interior spaces. Although the precise subject of the work is unknown, it shows a father and his son kneeling before him. The title, which comes from an inscription on the drawing's original frame, refers to the girl entering the room at right, who is presumably disgraced due to a pregnancy out of wedlock. She is preceded by a woman who angrily confronts the family, gesturing to the girl's swollen stomach, perhaps accusing either the old or young man of impregnating the girl.

Object facts

• Title: The Guilty and Repentant Daughter
• Date: early 1770s
• Creator attribution: Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: brush and black and gray wash over black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 49.8 x 64.3 cm (19 5/8 x 25 5/16 in.); Secondary Support: 49.8 x 64.3 cm (19 5/8 x 25 5/16 in.); Tertiary Support: 61.3 x 78.8 cm (24 1/8 x 31 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1989.46

A detail from the museum

The man who served as the model for the father in Greuze's drawing also appears as a butcher in another sheet by the artist.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bull, Duncan. "Exhibition Reviews: London, Old Master Drawings." Burlington Magazine 131, no. 1030 (January 1989): 49.
• Maîtres français 1550-1800: dessins de la donation Mathias Polakovits à l'École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Exh. Cat. Paris: École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 1989.
• E. H. T. “The Year in Review: Selections 1989.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 2 (February 1990): 38–78.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.