If Boucher and the army of painters of _fêtes galantes_ and boudoir
decorations reflect the tastes of the corrupt society of Louis XV.’s
age, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) is the painter _par
excellence_ of the lower bourgeoisie. His was an uneventful, colourless
life of unremitting work after the completion of his studies under
Cazes and N. N. Coypel. He never went to Rome; he never sought after
distinction in the “grand manner”; he never hankered after Court
patronage. He simply devoted himself to recording with the utmost
technical perfection the peaceful and domestic life of the lower middle
class, to which he himself belonged, with all his tastes and habits
of life, and to the painting of still-life, in which branch of art he
stands without a rival. There are among his thirty-two pictures at the
Louvre twenty paintings of _Still-life_ (Nos. 89, 90, 94, 95, 96, 98,
100, 105-116, and the doubtful No. 118), all equally remarkable for
their inimitable skill in the rendering of the most varied textures and
reflections; for subtle observation of the mutual effect of coloured
objects upon each other through the interchange of coloured rays; and,
above all, for that “sense of intimacy, of life behind the scene,” with
which he knew how to invest even inanimate objects.
This same sense of intimacy and of absolute pictorial unity is also
the great merit of his domestic genre pieces, into which enters, in
addition, the element of spiritual unity, of the absorption of each
person in his or her occupation. In the deservedly famous _Grace before
Meat_, at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, of which the Louvre owns
two admirable replicas (No. 92, Plate XLI., and No. 93), the most
casual observer cannot fail to notice that intimate bond between the
mother and the two children, which gives the impression of a scene
accidentally overlooked, without anybody being aware of the intruder’s
presence. _La Mère laborieuse_ (No. 91), _La Pourvoyeuse_ (No. 99),
and even the cat in the still-life piece _The Cat in the Larder_ (No.
89), are equally innocent of “posing,” and absorbed in their respective
occupations. _The Boy with the Top_ (No. 90A) and the _Young Man with
the Violin_ (No. 90B), under which titles we have the portraits of
the two children of the jeweller Charles Godefroy, were bought by the
Louvre in 1907 for £14,000. These two pictures and the _Castle of
Cards_ (No. 103) are sufficient to establish Chardin’s supremacy in
child portraiture.