The placid and agreeable cheerfulness of Chardin’s temperament affords some key to the things which his art chose, and the things which it left aside. Contentment with the daily round, and with the common lot, alone could have allowed him to confine the subject of his work within the limits of a narrow experience. He painted what he saw, and he saw the _bourgeoisie_, nor was he anxious to extend the field of his vision. He is the artist of ‘Le Bénédicité,’ of ‘La Mère Laborieuse,’ of ‘L’Économe,’ of ‘La Bonne Éducation’--that is, he is the painter of decent middle-class life, in its struggle with narrow means, and in its happiness, which is that of the family and of tranquil and ordered labour. Even the pursuits of his youth, when he painted still-life, and the pursuits of his age, when he was drawing portraits, accorded with that chronicle of the Parisian _bourgeoisie_ which was the work of his mid-career; for the portraits were yet of everyday folk, and the still-life, the fruits, the china, the copper vessels, the silk-lined workboxes in whose familiar textures, colours, tones, his brushes revelled so adroitly, were the natural accessories and accompaniments of an existence led always within the limits of the home. Thus regarded--and this is the fair way of looking at his course--there is really no sudden change of route to be discovered in his artistic progress. His was the record of the things he saw; but in his youth he did not feel himself strong enough to portray, in what he saw, that which was one day to interest him most--Humanity. He began very humbly. It was in 1728, when he was but twenty-nine, that his picture of ‘The Skate’ attracted some notice; and other objects of still-life were grouped with it at the Exposition de la Jeunesse, in the Place Dauphine, when M. Largillière--not a bad judge, one would have thought--inspected his things, and, not knowing that they were Chardin’s, protested that they must be the work of some very excellent Dutchman, and that Chardin would be wise if he copied them. Soon after that, as we have seen, he was accepted at the Academy, and from that time forward he exhibited at the Louvre. An exhibitor for forty years, he was for twenty years a hanger. That was a capacity in which he was sure to make enemies; but at least he was never blamed for bestowing unmerited prominence upon his own labours.