Soap Bubbles

The painting’s story and details

A young man blows a bubble through a straw. A child barely tall enough to reach the ledge watches him. In European painting, this pastime had long suggested the brevity of life. Chardin retains the familiar subject but fills almost the entire canvas with two people intent on making the bubble succeed.

The thin membrane projects beyond the stone ledge. A few reflections hold it together, with darkness visible through it. This presents a painter with a difficult task: making a transparent object neither disappear nor resemble a solid ball. Its almost imperceptible thickness sits beside the weight of the stone.

The young man leans forward, steadying the straw with one hand. Lips, fingers, and eyes converge on a single action. His brown coat is worn. Light picks out his forehead, cheek, and cuff, allowing this ordinary figure the prominence usually given to a distinguished sitter in a formal portrait.

The French Academy admitted Chardin as a painter of animals and fruit. Human activities received the same close treatment in his work as utensils and food in his still lifes. Here the cuff and the hand are built from substantial strokes of paint.

The child peers over the edge on the right. We see eyes, nose, and a broad hat, but almost none of the body. The child watches while the older figure handles the straw. The scene suggests a basic way of learning: watching someone else do something.

Another straw stands in the glass on the left. The game needs only water, soap, and breath. In the eighteenth century, prints of this subject carried moralizing verses about life’s fragility. No inscription supplies a conclusion here.

The composition found an audience, and Chardin returned to it. Other autograph versions are in Washington and Los Angeles. A bubble that lasts only seconds became a recurring subject in his painting. Buyers acquired an image of an ordinary pastime that could occupy a permanent place in their homes.