Still Life with Copper Pot, Cheese and Eggs

At first sight this could pass for a Dutch still life of the 1600s, a kitchen corner with a large copper pan, some earthenware, cheese and eggs, set in soft light. It was painted in Paris a century later, around 1730 to 1735, by Chardin, then in his early thirties. The Mauritshuis notes that he admired Dutch masters such as Pieter Claesz and Willem Heda, the Haarlem painters of laid breakfast tables, though he handled paint far more freely than they did.

The picture came to The Hague through a man who spent his life on Dutch painting. It belonged to Abraham Bredius, the art historian who had directed the Mauritshuis from 1889 to 1909. He lent it to the museum in 1901, and it became the museum's property under his will in 1946.