JEAN BAPTISTE GREUZE (1725, Tournus – 1805, Paris) - Young Semi-Nude Lady, 18th century French School Oil on panel, with an important period frame. Table measurements: 46 x 40 cm, canvas measurements: 70 x 58 cm. Exceptional artistic discovery and unpublished to date in the European art and auction market, provenance: 1) Former Monsieur Jules Vidal collection, Paris; 2) Former collection of the Count of Chinchón, Farnesio de Borbón family 3) By descent to the current owners. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725, Tournus – 1805, Paris) studied painting in Grandon's workshop in Lyon. Greuze moved to Paris in 1750 and entered, as a student of Natoire, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. His popularity was confirmed with other melodramatic paintings, depicting young provincial peasant scenes. One of his greatest artistic supporters was Diderot; art critic gave glowing praise to his painting for the moralism of his images. Among his greatest successes can be mentioned The Village Wedding or Acordée de village presented at the salon of 1761, where he once again shows a bourgeois rural interior. Among his notable works were “Father of a Family Explaining the Bible to His Children”, made in 1755, as well as “The Death of the Paralytic” from 1763, a painting that represents an elderly father on his deathbed surrounded by of his family. This painting is related to Jean Jacques Rousseau's novel, “La nouvelle Héloïse”, published that same year. After achieving great success with the public and critics, he began to produce history painting, the highest-ranking genre within official painting. His first work in this order is the so-called Seventh-Severe. Contrary to what he was looking for, this piece was a source of conflict with the Academy, since not only was it not accepted into the competition, but it earned him the enmity and devastating criticism of Denis Diderot. Greuze painted numerous portraits and received much criticism for his libertine paintings. The French ...