The Milkmaid

Two oval pictures by Greuze hang in this room, a milkmaid and The Broken Pitcher, and they look made as a pair. The Louvre calls them a false pair. The Broken Pitcher came from the country house of Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, and passed to the nation after the Revolution. This one took a longer road. She was sold in Paris in 1803, bought in 1821 by Baron James de Rothschild of the banking family, and left to the Louvre by his daughter Charlotte in 1899, about a century after the other. The museum names the model as Anne-Gabrielle Babuty, whom Greuze married in 1759. The milkmaid leans on the neck of a mule, and all we see of the animal is its head and the edge of the basket on its back.