The Attributes of the Arts

In 1792, the year the French monarchy fell, this canvas was taken down from above a door at Choisy, one of Louis XV's country châteaux, and carried to the Petits-Augustins in Paris, a former convent where the revolutionary authorities were storing art removed from churches and royal houses. In 1806 Napoleon sent it to Fontainebleau to furnish the palace he was refitting, and it reached the Louvre only in 1851.

Chardin painted it in 1765 to fit the curved woodwork above that door, and the canvas was later made rectangular. The old curved outline can still be made out in the darker corners. In the middle stands a white plaster figure of a seated woman, with brushes and a palette on one side and a bronze ewer on the other. Chardin signed and dated it halfway up on the right, Chardin 1765.