Soap Bubbles

From a glass of soapy water, a young man blows a bubble, its iridescent, translucent surface caught in the sunlight. A child peers eagerly over the ledge without breaking the atmosphere of silent concentration. In earlier Northern European painting, this subject carried a moralizing message about the transience of life; however, Chardin’s canvas moves the register from the allegorical to the everyday. Chardin became famous for miraculous surface effects achieved through rough yet refined paint application, as seen in the central figure’s jacket, locks, forehead, and hands. He made copies of his most successful compositions: later versions of Soap Bubbles belong to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and to the National Gallery of Art, Washington. This painting was seized by the Nazis from Jane Mannheimer in Paris and illegally purchased for the Führer Museum in 1944. It was returned to France by the Service Français de la Récupération following an agreement with the Netherlands Art Property Foundation and was restituted in or after 1948.