The Monkey Antiquarian

At the Salon of 1740 Chardin, the painter of kitchens and quiet households, showed a monkey dressed as a scholar. Wrapped in a loose orange robe, the monkey sits on a cane chair and peers through a magnifying glass at a coin. A tray of coins lies on the table beside him, and a book with engravings of coins is open on the stool. The target was the antiquarian, the collector of ancient coins and medals, a familiar figure in the Paris of collectors' cabinets.

Monkeys aping human trades, the singeries, were in fashion in French decoration, and around the same time Christophe Huet was covering a whole room at the Château de Chantilly with them. Chardin set his single figure inside a painted oval on a rectangular canvas. At the Salon it had a companion, a monkey painter. The Monkey Painter the Louvre also owns is smaller, has no oval and came from a different collection, so it was not made as this picture's pair. Chardin repeated this composition more than once, with one version in the museum at Chartres.