Pipes and Drinking Pitcher

A smoker's box stands open on a ledge, its lid lined in blue, with a long pipe laid across the front. Around it Chardin set out a tall white jug with a blue pattern, a small silver goblet, a porcelain cup with its lid beside it and a stemmed glass at the right edge. The picture is also known as La Tabagie. The Louvre dates it only broadly, to the third quarter of the 18th century. The museum bought it in 1867 at the sale of Laurent Laperlier, a leading collector of Chardin, and at the same sale it bought The Provider and a plate of peaches. In 1940, when the Louvre's paintings had been sent out of Paris for safety, this canvas was restored while it was kept at the depot of La Pelice, an old abbey in the Sarthe.