The Blessing
19th century
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 12 5/8 × 9 5/8 in. (32 × 24.5 cm) Plate: 8 9/16 × 6 5/8 in. (21.7 × 16.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Georgiana W. Sargent, in memory of John Osborne Sargent, 1924
Accession Number
24.63.1305
Tags
Art Historical Context
Jean Siméon Chardin, a master of 18th-century French genre painting, captures the tender intimacy of daily life in *The Blessing*, an etching reproduced in the 19th century by Ed. Budischowsky. print depicts a serene domestic moment—likely a young child offering grace before a meal, surrounded by a woman in a humble dining setting. Chardin's originals, painted during the Rococo era, celebrated ordinary scenes with remarkable realism and warmth, elevating the everyday to poetic heights. Etching, as seen here in the precisely measured plate (8 9/16 × 6 5/8 in.), was a key reproductive technique...
About the Artist
Jean Siméon Chardin|Ed. Budischowsky · 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 ...