La Blanchisseuse

In the 1730s the Paris Academy still ranked painting by its subject, and scenes of kings and gods sat far above a woman scrubbing linen in a back room. Chardin painted the back room. A young laundress leans into her tub, sleeves pushed up, while behind her a small child sits blowing soap bubbles through a straw, already distracted from the work. Chardin built the quiet from very little, a few muted browns and greys, each object weighed and set in place. About 40 years later the canvas was part of the Crozat collection in Paris when the writer Denis Diderot urged Catherine the Great to buy it. She did, in 1772, and it has hung in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg since.