French School, 18th-19th Century
Soap Bubbles
Oil on panel, 44.5 x 36.5 cm
With frame, 60 x 54 cm
In this painting of the French school, with a precious and playful tone, a mother lovingly approaches her son intent on blowing a soap bubble. Numerous details in the painting refer to the panorama of French academic painting between the 18th and 19th centuries. The rich and opulent garments of the woman, as well as the graceful pink lace parasol, recall the elaborate costumes of the participants in Watteau's country festivals, while the still life on the right of the painting seems to relate to some models of Chardin and Fragonard. The iconography of the painting also recalls the pictorial activity of Chardin, which seems to take up The Soap Bubbles, of the LACMA in Los Angeles. In Chardin's painting, a young man blows a bubble from a glass of soapy water. Its iridescent and translucent surface is captured in the sunlight.
The subject of blowing bubbles, widespread north of the Alps as early as the seventeenth century, was the proponent of a moralizing message about the transience of life; however, Chardin's canvas and the works that, on his theme, address the theme in these terms, shift the register from allegories to everyday life. Chardin's interpretation of the theme of blowing bubbles is often taken up by French artists of the nineteenth century, as is also visible with regard to Manet's Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles at the Museu Calouste-Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
