The Young Schoolmistress

In 1740 Chardin showed this lesson at the Paris Salon, in a city where comfortable middle-class families were putting new value on teaching their children to read at home. Nobody is sure which version hung there, since he painted the scene more than once, and another canvas by him is in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. An older girl, perhaps in her early teens, leans across a wooden cabinet with a metal pointer, picking out letters on a loose sheet. The child opposite copies her with one small finger. On the child's head is a bourlet, a padded roll that protected toddlers when they fell. The girl wears an indoor cap tied with a ribbon, a scarf and a pinafore. Chardin paints the two faces close together, both turned down to the page.