Jean-Siméon Chardin, French, 1699-1779
Title: The Schoolmistress
Date: c.1735
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
62 x 73 cm
Credit Line: Bequeathed, Sir Hugh Lane, 1918
Object Number: NGI.813
ProvenanceBequeathed, Sir Hugh Lane, 1918
Exhibition HistoryFrench Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932
Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art francais, Palais National des Arts, Paris, 1937
La femme dans l'art francais, Palais des Beau-Arts, Brussels, 1953
From Titian to Delacroix: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Ireland, Yokohama Sogo Museum of Art, 25 August - 17 October 1993; Chiba Sogo Museum of Art, 10 November - 20 December 1993; Prefectural Museum of Art, Yamaguchi, 5 January - 20 February 1994; Kobe City Museum, 25 February - 10 April 1994; Isetan Museum of Art, 14 April - 24 May 1994
European Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery, Canberra, 25 June - 3 October 1994; Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 October 1994 - 15 January 1995
Von Poussin bis Monet. Die Farben Frankreichs, The Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, 22 March - 6 September 2015; Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 10 October 2015 - 17 January 2016
Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art francais, Palais National des Arts, Paris, 1937
La femme dans l'art francais, Palais des Beau-Arts, Brussels, 1953
From Titian to Delacroix: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Ireland, Yokohama Sogo Museum of Art, 25 August - 17 October 1993; Chiba Sogo Museum of Art, 10 November - 20 December 1993; Prefectural Museum of Art, Yamaguchi, 5 January - 20 February 1994; Kobe City Museum, 25 February - 10 April 1994; Isetan Museum of Art, 14 April - 24 May 1994
European Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery, Canberra, 25 June - 3 October 1994; Art Gallery of New South Wales, 21 October 1994 - 15 January 1995
Von Poussin bis Monet. Die Farben Frankreichs, The Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, 22 March - 6 September 2015; Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 10 October 2015 - 17 January 2016
Label TextThis genre scene highlights the importance of education. Chardin was inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch paintings of ordinary life, which were popular with French collectors in the eighteenth century. He painted two identical versions (now in the National Galleries of Art in Washington and London) suggesting that it was a popular image that sold well. He exhibited a painting with this title at the Paris Salon of 1740. It was engraved in the same year by Lépicié with a moralising caption. There are references to it being sold with a pendant image, ‘Soap Bubbles’, which illustrated the dangers of wasting time.