Greuze: The Draftsman, May 14, 2002 – August 4, 2002 While many today find Greuze's story-telling pictures hard to take, unwilling to accept them as eighteenth-century equivalents of plays, operas, films, or even television sitcoms, the artist's drawings have an immediate and irresistible appeal. Never labored in their execution, they make the viewer feel as if he were looking at something created only moments before: lines whip off to the edges of the sheet, accents sometimes are ground vigorously into the paper, or sometimes they are set down in airy curlicues. Children are recorded as real people, women offer their attractions boldly, men look up in terror, dogs bark. It is the world in all of its varied manifestations that Greuze captured in his endless catalogue of life. Had he lived a hundred years later, he would have been called a realist; had he lived two hundred years later, he would have been a great filmmaker. Diderot summed up his achievement as a draftsman when he noted, "this man draws like an angel." [/] the frick collection, 1 East 70th Street , New York