ng his lifetime; after more than half a century of hard
work he left little for his widow. Nor in the years immediately
subsequent to that of his death did values advance much. The engraver
Wille bought a still-life for thirty-six livres, a picture that to-day
would sell for thousands of dollars. At the beginning of the last
century, in 1810, when David was ruler of the arts in Paris, the two
masterpieces in pastel, now in the Louvre, the portraits of Chardin
aux besicles, and the portrait of Marguerite Pouget, his second
spouse, could have been bought for twenty-four francs. In 1867 at the
Laperlier sale the Pourvoyeuse was sold for four thousand and fifty
francs to the Louvre, and forty years later the Louvre gave three
hundred and fifty thousand francs to Madame Emile Trepard for Le Jeune
Homme au Violon and l'Enfant au Toton. Diderot truly prophesied that
the hour of reparation would come.

He is a master of discreet tonalities and a draughtsman of the first
order. His lighting, more diffused than Rembrandt's, is the chief
actor in his scene. With it he accomplishes magical effects, with it
he makes beautiful copper caldrons, humble vegetables, leeks, carrots,
potatoes, onions, shining rounds of beef, hares, and fish become
eloquent witnesses to the fact that there is nothing dead or ugly in
nature if the vision that interprets is artistic. It is said that no
one ever saw Chardin at work in his atelier, but his method, his
_facture_ has been ferreted out though never excelled. He employs the
division of tones, his _couches_ are fat and his colour is laid on
lusciously. His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his chief
allurement. Greuze, passing one of his canvases at an exhibition, a
long time regarded it and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. The
frivolous "Frago," who studied with Chardin for a brief period, even
though he left him for Boucher, admired his former master without
understanding him. Decamps later exclaimed in the Louvre: "The whites
of Chardin! I don't know how to recapture them." He might have added
the silvery grays. M. Pilon remarks that as in the case of Vermeer the
secret of Chardin tones has never been surprised. The French painter
knew the art of modulation, while his transitions are bold; he
enveloped his objects in atmosphere and gave his shadows a due share
of luminosity. He placed his colours so that at times his work
resembles mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before the modern