La Fontaine
Medium
Etching and engraving; second state of three
Dimensions
Sheet (trimmed): 10 11/16 × 11 13/16 in. (27.2 × 30 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953
Accession Number
53.600.520
Tags
Art Historical Context
**La Fontaine (The Fountain), 1739** Jean Siméon Chardin, master of French Rococo painting celebrated for his intimate domestic scenes, originally created the composition for this etching and engraving, skillfully reproduced by Charles Nicolas Cochin. Depicting a quiet interior with a woman tending to household chores amid urns and buckets near a fountain or sink, the print captures the serene beauty of everyday life. Chardin's subtle realism—his masterful play of light on humble objects—elevates ordinary moments, reflecting 18th-century bourgeois domesticity in Paris. This second state of t...
About the Artist
Jean Siméon Chardin|Charles Nicolas Cochin I · 1699–1779
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, born on November 2, 1699, in Paris to a cabinetmaker father who crafted billiard tables, grew up immersed in the city's artisan world on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice. His early training came through apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes, where he honed academic drawing techniques, and Noël-Nicolas Coypel, whose assignment to copy a musket ...