Soap Bubbles by Chardin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2007

Soap Bubbles
Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779)
Oil on canvas; 24 x 24 7/8 in. (61 x 63.2 cm)
Wentworth Fund, 1949 (49.24)

The idle play of children was a favorite theme of Chardin's. In this painting of about 1734 he drew inspiration from the seventeenth-century Dutch genre tradition, for both format and the subject. While it is not certain that he intended the picture to carry a message, soap bubbles usually allude to the transience of life. Chardin painted two other versions of this picture (Los Angeles County Museum; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/europe...