Le Panier de fraises des bois

Chardin showed this small still life at the Paris Salon in the summer of 1761, a pyramid of wild strawberries in a basket beside a glass of water, two white carnations and a couple of cherries. At the time it drew almost no notice. Chardin was respected but out of fashion, and it was the grand mythological scenes that the crowds came for. Two and a half centuries later it had become one of the best-loved French paintings of its century. When it came up at auction in Paris in 2022 it sold for over 24 million euros, a record for an 18th-century French work. The Louvre could not match that alone, so it ran a public appeal, and roughly 10,000 ordinary donors helped buy the strawberries for France in 2024.