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. FRAGONARD