Portrait of a Boy

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 40.6 x 32.1 cm (16 x 12.6 in)

Provenance: Perhaps Alfred de Rothschild; sale, American Art Assoc., New York, 22 April 1932, lot 79 (measuring 15 x 12 in.)

The foremost Greuze scholar, Dr. Edgar Munhall, suggests in a letter dated June 1988, that this portrait is a preliminary study for Espièglerie (the mischievous boy) at the Wallace Collection, London, adding that ‘without its narrative gesture [vis the Wallace picture] , it has the appeal of a real portrait study rather than a subject picture.’ He has further suggested that it might be identified with the picture of the same subject from the collection of Alfred de Rothschild, sold at the American Art Association in 1932, although there is a small (and common) discrepancy in the dimensions.