Chardin's last years were saddened by the tragic end of his son and by a terribly painful illness. His duties as Treasurer became too much for him, and he resigned this office to the sculptor Coustou in 1774. There was a small deficit which he volunteered to make good, but this offer was declined, and a banquet was given to him by his colleagues as an expression of their appreciation of his services. The acute suffering caused by his illness did not prevent him from continuing his artistic work, and we find him at the very end of his career branching out in an entirely new direction. The pastel portraits of his closing years betray no decline in keenness of vision and in power of expression. Indeed, they must be counted among his finest achievements. He worked to the very last, and sent some pastel heads to the Salon of 1779. On the 6th of December of the same year he breathed his last. His remains were buried at St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, in the parish of the Louvre. With him died the art of the French eighteenth century. A kind fate had saved him from the misfortune that fell to the share of his contemporaries Fragonard and Greuze, who outlived him by many years, but who also outlived the _ancien régime_ and died in poverty and neglect and misery. The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., London and Derby The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh FOOTNOTES: [1] A signboard of the conventional type, but painted with all Chardin's consummate mastery, is the one executed for the perfume distiller Pinaud, which appeared at the Guildhall Exhibition in 1902, and at Whitechapel in 1907. [2] The candidates had to pass through a probationary stage before they were definitely received by the Academy. Transcriber's Notes: Simple typographical errors were corrected. Page 30: "Goncourt brothers'" was printed as "brothers' Goncourt". Table of Contents added by Transcriber. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chardin, by Paul G. Konody