Still Life with Teapot, Grapes, Chestnuts, and a Pear

Chardin signed this little canvas at the lower left and wrote a date beside his name that has partly worn away. The museum reads it, with a question mark, as 1764. A white teapot, a bunch of pale grapes, a few chestnuts and a single pear sit together on a stone ledge against a brown ground. Look at the pear. On its side there is a patch of bright orange, brushed on and left as paint. The picture came to Boston early. In May 1883 it was sold in Paris with the collection of the Baron de Beurnonville, and the Boston collector Martin Brimmer bought it. Brimmer had been the first president of the Museum of Fine Arts since its founding in 1870, and the museum had moved into its first building on Copley Square only seven years before. He gave the picture to it that October.