The Lady Giving Charity

Greuze painted The Lady Giving Charity around 1772, one of his late moral genre scenes depicting the act of charitable donation by a well-dressed woman to a humble recipient. The subject combined Greuze's interest in moral instruction with his commercial instinct for subjects that allowed the display of both fashionable female subjects and scenes of benevolent social action. The charity scene connected the private domestic virtue that was his characteristic domain with the public social responsibility that the period increasingly associated with the prosperous bourgeoisie. The woman's dignified generosity and the recipient's gratitude create a scene of social harmony that appealed to the reforming impulses of the Enlightenment's prosperous readers.

Greuze renders the charitable encounter with warm lighting and careful attention to the contrasting social positions of the figures. The soft modeling of flesh and the sentimental expressions demonstrate his mastery of the emotionally affecting genre scene.