Chardin, Le Bénédicité, c. 1740, Louvre

Mother is serving her two daughter supper, soup, or, perhaps porridge.  There are two large upholstered chairs; one for the mother, one for the father.  But father isn’t there.  Where is he?  The younger sits on a low chair from which she will never reach the soup bowl.  She been playing with her toy drum; the drum stick lies on the floor.  She looks intently at her mother who meets her gaze.  Mother looks a bit sad, or confused, or most likely disappointed.  Has the young one said she doesn’t want porridge? That she doesn’t like chicken & potato soup?  Asked an inappropriate question about the prayer or forgotten it?  The older sister looks on condescendingly, which also suggests the young one is somewhat out of line. 

Maybe she has asked where father is, and the mother knows all too well and becomes melancholy & the older sister has a pitying look because she’s worldly-wise and knows one shouldn’t ask.  She doesn’t know either where father is, but she feels it’s wrong to ask. The father is a shopkeeper, or a civil servant, or an employee of a grand banker or china manufacturer.

Or, I like to think the young one is relaying a story, a story of a drummer and his lover.  Or his dog?  And the other two listen to the sad ending?  The little one is always telling stories, stories about animals, goblins and fairies, princesses and their prince charmings.  The mother and sister are always delighted – these stories are the high points of the day – so naïve, so enthusiastic, so surprising.  The mother wonders what will become of this child, what future can there be for such a dreamer, for a girl who wants to needlepoint fairies and dragons, whose mind wanders when she’s to learn her letters.  The other child seems quite ordinary and mother already is watching several families with sons.

Chardin, mid-18^th c., concentrated on bourgeois families of the middling sort.  No great wealth here; these are the people who, if skilled and lucky, rose during the confusion during the end of Ancien Regime. If clumsy or unlucky, they stayed put or dropped out of the bourgeoisie.  The children or grandsons of the jeune filles got to fight or rise and fall with the Revolution or Bonaparte. 

The browns and shadows in the pictures suggest domesticity and a restricted world, but also so melancholy.  It’s hard to look at this picture and feel any sort of happiness is in their lives.  These are serious people, working hard, few pleasures; a world away from the flowers, fops and frippery of Fragonard or the soft, moist coital reveries of Boucher.