# Broken Eggs, in 18th-century France

Jean Baptiste Greuze painted this in 1756, aged 31. It is now at The Met in New York.

Our note:

> A young woman sits dejected beside a basket of broken eggs, while an older woman remonstrates with a young man who seems eager to slip away. The broken eggs are a pointed metaphor for lost innocence.

[Read the full label](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/broken-eggs-met-436579#about-work)

## The work

- Date: 1756
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 28 3/4 x 37 in. (73 x 94 cm)
- Type: Paintings
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20.155.8
- Licence: CC0 1.0

## The artist

[Jean Baptiste Greuze](https://www.ochreeditions.com/artists/jean-baptiste-greuze), French, 1725–1805

Greuze rose to fame at the Paris Salon in the later 1750s with moralising scenes of family life, sentimental and theatrical, which the critic Denis Diderot championed. Broken Eggs, shown at the Salon of 1757, tells a story of lost innocence through a single domestic incident.

3 works in the collection.

## Walk on

- [More by Jean Baptiste Greuze](https://www.ochreeditions.com/galleries/artist/jean-baptiste-greuze?hang=749) (3 works)
- [More French eighteenth century](https://www.ochreeditions.com/galleries/style/french-eighteenth-century?hang=749) (35 works)
- [The 18th century](https://www.ochreeditions.com/galleries/era/18?hang=749) (347 works)

## Get it

- [Print this work](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/broken-eggs-met-436579#print)
- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/1099.jpg?dl=1
- [The work's page](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/broken-eggs-met-436579)