A small exhibition focused on a pair of pastel portraits by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) that had recently been acquired by the museum: Baptiste Aîné and Madame Baptiste Aîné. Executed in Paris in the early 1790s, these dramatic images of a famous actor and his wife belong to an impressive series of portraits that Greuze painted and drew during the turbulent years of the French Revolution. Included in the exhibition in the Cabinet gallery were another pair of pastel portraits by Greuze depicting the poet and political figure Fabre d'Eglantine and his wife, Madame Fabre d'Eglantine, oil portraits of Citizen Desain de Saint-Gobert and Louis-François Robin, and photographic reproductions of a dozen others Greuze painted in the 1790s.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Nicolas-Pierre-Baptiste Anselme, called Baptiste aîné, c. 1790. Pastel on cream paper. The Frick Collection, New York