III. 46 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plate I. Still-Life Frontispiece In the Louvre Page II. La Fontaine, or the Woman Drawing Water 14 In the National Gallery, London III. L'Enfant au Toton, or the Child with the Top 24 In the Louvre IV. Le Bénédicité, or Grace before Meat 34 In the Hermitage Collection at St. Petersburg V. La Gouvernante, or Mother and Son 40 In the Collection of Prince Liechtenstein in Vienna VI. La Mère Laborieuse 50 In the Stockholm Museum VII. Le Panneau de Pêches, or the Basket of Peaches 60 In the Louvre VIII. La Pourvoyeuse 70 In the Louvre [Illustration] I Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin occupies a curious position among the artists of his time and country. His art which, neglected and despised for many decades after his death, is now admitted by those best competent to judge to be supreme as regards technical excellence, and, within the narrow limits of its subject matter, to possess merits of far greater significance than are to be found in the work of any Frenchman, save Watteau, from the founding of the school of Fontainebleau to modern days, is apt to be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, un-French, out of touch, and out of sympathy with the expression of the artistic genius of eighteenth-century France. A grave misconception of the true inwardness of things! Rather should it be said that Chardin was the one typically French painter among a vast crowd of more or less close followers of a tradition imported from Italy; the one painter of the actual life of his people among the artificial caterers for an artificial and often depraved and lascivious taste; a man of the people, of the vast multitude formed by a homely, simple bourgeoisie; painting for the people the subjects that appealed to the people.