Editor’s Note: The following story contains mentions of material related to sexual assault. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.PARIS — The Grand Palais in Paris is currently bedecked with awnings advertising the forthcoming Art Basel, a bastion of contemporary art. The Petit Palais, its mini version across the street, feels like the exact opposite, with its holdings of 19th-century art. On the 300th anniversary of the birth of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, it has chosen to mount a survey of his depictions of 18th-century French life through the prism of childhood. It claims that though Greuze is little celebrated today, he was incredibly popular in his own time, enjoying consistent success at the Salon and regularly collected by a wealth of patrons, and argues that he was “one of the most daring figures of the 18th century.” Those crossing the road from a display of what is popular today to one of what was in vogue then will learn that in the 1700s, populism meant technically proficient but excessively mawkish and moralizing renditions of women and children with eyes rolling a-heavenward. Curators Annick Lemoine, Yuriko Jackall, and Mickaël Szanto argue that Greuze’s renditions of families experiencing the societal rites of the time — bible-reading, school lessons, bearing witness to death — are critical and sharp renderings of psychological experience. The key issue here is the word “critical.” These works call to mind similar domestic scenes painted by William Hogarth in England a few decades earlier, which tackled the same scenes with no degree of sentimentality, employing biting satire to ridicule societal norms. But there is no abject criticism here — just a sympathetic, appealing softness both in painterly treatment and subject matter, which is mostly wide-eyed figures doing wholesome family stuff.Jean-Baptiste Greuze, “Portrait of Anne-Geneviève (known as Caroline) Greuze” (1766), oil on canvasThe first impression of the exhibition is of a flurry of portraits of children clutching dogs, reading forlornly, or glancing adorably over their shoulders, insipid eyes gazing wetly at us. The real moralizing comes with the domestic scenes — in fact, it quickly becomes clear that that really should have been the focus, rather than childhood. Works in this category include genre scenes like “Silence!” (1759), in which a woman cares for her three children, and “Bible Reading”(1755), which includes a peasant family complete with inattentive children, eventually expanding into sections dedicated to themes such as father-son relations. Here we find depictions of an obscure Roman history story of “Septus Severus Reproaching his Son Caracalla” (1767–69), accompanied by a study for “Caracalla” (1767). It smells of insufficient direct childhood material to work with, which would have been fine (please, no more doe-eyed sprogs) if the show had centered the wider topic of domesticity.Where the choice to focus on childhood becomes outright problematic is the show’s bizarre conclusion, which consists of several examples from a series on spoiled innocence, as well as, more explicitly, lost virginity. Here are innumerable worryingly adorable pre-pubescent girls sighing over a dead bird (“The Dead Bird,” 1800) or crying over a dead bird (“Young Girl with a Dead Bird,” 1763) in an allegory of lost innocence. “The Broken Vessel” (1771–72), in which an exposed girl with crumpled clothes gazes vacantly past the viewer following a recent unsavory experience, takes on the theme more explicitly. The curators write that “Greuze was the first painter to associate the loss of virginity with the notion of trauma.” Maybe so, but glance at its grand oval frame, and the subject’s deliberate attractiveness in dishevelment — we can’t have the girl looking actually upset, it seems to suggest, romanticizing this cruelest of experiences. Then think of his contemporaneous popularity, which this exhibition took such pains to emphasize. Such portrayals are perhaps the most revealing element about childhood in the whole show, and what they suggest has less to do with Greuze’s work in particular and more about the social views of his time.Jean-Baptiste Greuze, “The Broken Vessel” (1771–72), oil on canvasJean-Baptiste Greuze, “The Father’s Curse. The Ungrateful Son” (1777), oil on canvasJean-Baptiste Greuze, “The Dead Bird” (1800), oil on canvasInstallation view of Jean-Baptiste Greuze: Childhood IlluminatedJean-Baptiste Greuze, “A Schoolboy Studying His Lesson,” also known as “The Little Schoolboy” (c. 1755–57), oil on canvasJean-Baptiste Greuze, “Silence!” (1759), oil on canvasJean-Baptiste Greuze, “Bust of a Young Girl” (1780), oil on canvasJean-Baptiste Greuze: Childhood Illuminated continues at the Petit Palais, Paris, through January 25, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Annick Lemoine, Yuriko Jackall, and Mickaël Szanto.