In the ‘Odalisque,’ a sketch of an Oriental nudity, we see for once that which is rather surprising in work of Ingres’s--a picture, that is, in which, at the stage now reached, the colour is better than the design, if it is not better than the draughtsmanship. The curved line of the right arm repeats, surely, only awkwardly the curve of the wide-hipped figure; and in the left arm, and in the modelling of some portions of the trunk, there is little indication of the ‘correctness of form’ which, to borrow Gautier’s phrase, was, at least with Ingres, ‘virtue.’ We are glad, of course, to see any canvas of Ingres’s at Burlington House, because it is a sight vouchsafed but seldom, and again, because Ingres is a master in whose labours there is, alike in France and England, some right revival of interest. But it would have been well had it been possible to represent him, not semi-romantic and luxurious, limp in line, impoverished of colour, but rather, as in ‘The Apotheosis of Homer,’ august of conception, or, as in ‘The Source,’ refined and exquisite of form. (_Standard_, 4th January 1896.) CHARDIN Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin--a man of the _bourgeoisie_, as original as Hogarth--was born on the 2nd November 1699. It was in Paris, in the quarter of St. Sulpice, in the trading quarter where shopkeepers and skilled artisans wait on the wants of the neighbouring Faubourg St. Germain. He was of humble, decent parentage, as befitted the place; and he had for godmother, when he was christened, one Anne Bourgine, wife of Jacques Riche, who declared herself unable to sign her name in attestation of the event. Chardin’s father was a cabinet-maker; a dexterous craftsman, with a speciality which, along with such honour as it afforded, he passed on to one of his sons. He made, as Chardin’s best biographer has told us, ‘ces billards monumentaux dont une planche de Bonnart nous a gardé le dessin,’ and he made them for the King. But though he worked successfully and well, the burden of a family weighed on his fortunes, and his thought about his children was chiefly that they might find means of support. Chardin was given little education, and he was to have followed his father’s trade, but he showed, in his quite early youth, enough of promise as a painter for it to be held reasonable that he should enter M. Cazes’ painting-room. Cazes was not at this time an unknown artist, but Chardin learned almost nothing from him. The inventor of a _genre_, Chardin must needs be his own best teacher. Time and his own individuality alone could allow him his sturdy facility of touch. Only in working for himself could he acquire the schemes of colour, the tones, the delicate justice of expression, for which we admire him to-day. And if he was already independent of a master in the selection of his method, still more his own was his choice of the world which he observed to record.