Still, having pointed out the gulf that divides our master from the still-life painters of the _grand siècle_, it is only right to add that he did not burst upon the world as an isolated phenomenon, and that painters like Desportes and Oudry form the bridge from Monnoyer, the best known of the French seventeenth-century compilers of showy monumental still-life, to Chardin. Monnoyer belongs to a time that knew neither respect nor genuine love for Nature and her laws. He simply followed the rules of the grand style, and had no eye for the play of reflections and the other problems, which are the delight of the moderns--and Chardin is essentially modern. Monnoyer's son Baptiste, and his son-in-law Belin de Fontenay did not depart from his artificial manner. But with Oudry, in spite of much that is still traditional in his art, we arrive already at a new conception of still-life painting. In a paper read by this artist to the Academy he relates how, in his student days, when asked by Largillière to paint some flowers, he placed a carefully chosen, gaily coloured bouquet in a vase, when his master stopped him and said: "I have set you this task to train you for colour. Do you think the choice you have made will do for the purpose? Get a bunch of flowers all white." Oudry did as he was bid, and was then told to observe that the flowers are brown on the shadow side, that on a light ground they appear in half tones, and that the whitest of them are darker than absolute white. Largillière then pointed out to him the action of reflections, and made him paint by the side of the flowers various white objects of different value for comparison. Oudry was not a little surprised at discovering that the flowers consisted of an accumulation of broken tones, and were given form and relief by the magic of shadows. Both Oudry and Desportes did not consider common objects unworthy of their attention, and in this way led up to the type of work in which Chardin afterwards achieved his triumphs.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--L'ENFANT AU TOTON (THE CHILD WITH THE TOP)
"L'Enfant au Toton" ("The Child with the Top") is the portrait of Auguste Gabriel Godefroy, son of the jeweller Godefroy, and is the companion picture to the "Young Man with the Violin," which represents the child's elder brother Charles. The two pictures were bought in 1907 for the Louvre, at the high price of 350,000 francs. "L'Enfant au Toton" was first exhibited at the Salon of 1738, and was engraved by Lépicié in 1742. A replica of the picture was in the collection of the late M. Groult. It is one of Chardin's most delightful presentments of innocent childish amusement, and illustrates at the same time the master's supreme skill in the painting of still-life.]