His wholesome and yet subtle variations from the art
_a la mode_ of his epoch might have been painted in the Holland of his
day, or in our day anywhere that art so good as Chardin's can be
produced, so far as subject and moral and technical attitude are
concerned. They are, in quite accentuated contra-distinction from the
works of Greuze, thoroughly in the spirit of simplicity and directness.
One notes in them at once that moral simplicity which predisposes
everyone to sympathetic appreciation. The special ideas of his time seem
to pass him by unmoved. He has no community of interest with them. While
he was painting his still life and domestic genre, the whole fantastic
whirl of Louis Quinze society, with its aesthetic standards and
accomplishments--accomplishments and standards that imposed themselves
everywhere else--was in agitated movement around him without in the
least affecting his serene tranquillity, his almost sturdy composure.
There can rarely have been such an instance as he affords of an artist's
selecting from his environment just those things his own genius needed,
and rejecting just what would have hampered or distracted him.
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