La Prière du matin

The theme of the morning prayer, a devotion particularly recommended by the Reformed Church, was probably suggested to Greuze by his links with Protestantism. A young girl kneels beside her bed in the soft light of early morning, her hands joined in prayer — one of the artist’s late variations on the sentimental piety that made his fortune. Painted between 1775 and 1800, the panel shows Greuze’s characteristic tenderness for the domestic interior, the figure wrapped in simple clothing and the modest room painted with the fine touch of his best genre scenes. The painting is held in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, le goût du XVIIIe.