Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) was one of the most significant artists of the French school in the 18th century. His unique style and sentimental, melodramatic genre pictures distinguished him from all the others; he created his own, uniquely personal style. Although his piece for entry to the Academy in 1769 was rejected, the critics, even at an early stage in his career, showered him with praise, most of all Diderot, who claimed to have discovered in him “morality in the form of art”. His L’Accordee du Village (1713, The Village Bride), in which every detail had the effect of an actor playing his role, seemed to emerge from a “comedie-larmoyante” (sentimental domestic drama) or a contemporary drama. Many of his later works were delightful pictures of young girls.

      Greuze placed the emphasis very particularly on the sensitive, even if it then, as in The Broken Jug (1785), occasionally crossed the line into the melodramatic. In the representation of faces and half-figures of pretty children and girls, sometimes looking rather lost in thought but also fitting the taste of the upper classes, he made certain admissions, whereby he created a style of painting which has outlived all the revolutionary upheavals. These works include the Portrait of a Young Peasant Girl and Portrait of a Young Girl (both c. 1770–1780). With the end of the century, his career, too, came to an end. A new style and a new star were discovered: neoclassicism and Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825).

      In the year 1720, the highly productive Venetian Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757), who worked mainly at the courts in Vienna, Modena and Versailles, visited Paris. She had a reputation across Europe as an outstanding pastel artist; in Paris, although she did not stay very long, she stirred up a veritable storm of enthusiasm with her art, which includes amongst many others the Portrait of a Boy in the Leblond Family.