PLATE I.—STILL-LIFE. (Frontispiece)

(In the Louvre)

This "Still-Life," which is among the fine array of Chardin's pictures at the Louvre, affords a striking illustration of the master's supreme skill in rendering the surface qualities, textures, plastic properties, and mutual colour relations of the most varied objects and substances, such as porcelain, metals, linen, foodstuffs, wood, and so forth. The composition is somewhat overcrowded, and lacks the sense of order in the apparent disorder, that is so typical of Chardin's still-life arrangements.