Grande Huile Sur Toile "le Sauvetage" 181 X 114 Cm - Ecole Française, Vers 1800

The original painting measured about 150 x 104 cm, the enlargement at the top right is almost contemporaneous with the creation of the painting. An old relining dating from the mid-nineteenth century allowed the work to be stretched on a keyed frame.

The scene depicts the rescue of two children by two soldiers from the collapse of a half-timbered house.
In the centre, the young mother faints in the arms of her mother and grandmother, in front of a panicked crowd. The first of the rescuers Looking over the scene of panic with a slight smile, he carries a child in his swaddling clothes who looks down at his mother and smiles.
The dust and smoke of this near-night scene contributes to the dramatic dynamics of this scene, as well as the panicked expressions and attitudes of all the characters except the rescuers.
Dating of the costumes :
The garment and the embroidered waistcoat of the bourgeois on the left in a tricorne hark to the 1790s, the woman's peplum dress from back to back right, too. However, the young mother's white dress with its high waist and flowing drapery as well as her colourful shawl are typical of the Directory or the Consulate, before 1806. The uniforms are probably those of the line artillery, nicknamed "white cus", uniforms adopted in 1791. Apart from the young woman dressed in the latest fashion (an English hat lies at her feet), most of the protagonists seem to have a more provincial style.
Stylistics :
During the Revolution, the dissolution of the royal and provincial academies, and the departure of many artists abroad following the nobles, led (apart from a few great names) to a decadence of French painting, and to a production that was often too naïve. Here we are dealing with an artist who shows great mastery of composition, drawing, perspective and colour. The soldier on the right, the child he is carrying, the bourgeois, the woman in blue  covering the head and its child, as well as the figures in the window on the left, are very eighteenth century in GREUZE's mind. The young soldier, the child he is carrying, the young man in the green frock coat and the distraught woman just behind him, are already romantic. The smiling child resembles some of the figures that would be made a few years later of the King of Rome. It is not impossible that a master and his pupil may have worked on the same painting.
Theme Identification :
It may be just an anecdote that we don't know about, a simple fire. but nevertheless it is very possible that this is an episode of the earthquake of January 25, 1799, the earthquake of Bouin, in the Breton-Vendée marsh which caused much damage. After the war of the Vendée and the Chouans, the commission of a painting to the glory of the army rescuers would have had a propaganda meaning.