Saying Grace or The Prayer Before a Meal is the title of several paintings by French artistJean Simeon Chardin. Chardin painted several versions, one of which was given as a gift to Louis XV. The subject of the painting, a middle class French family saying grace before a meal, is one of everyday bourgeois tranquillity—Chardin's field of expertise—with an uncharacteristic touch of sentimentality.
History
Chardin, who had made his fame painting still life, had at this point in his career started also to include human figures in his works. He painted several versions of Le Bénédicité, three of which were exhibited at the Salon, in 1740, 1746 and 1761. The original, from 1740, was given as a gift to the King. The painting fell into oblivion ten yearsafter the death of Louis XV, but was rediscovered in 1845. Another version was kept by the artist throughout his life, and eventually ended up in the Musée du Louvre, through the large bequest of Louis La Caze in 1869. The version from the 1761 Salon - a horizontal composition - is now lost.
The painting
Chardin is well known for his depictions of humble, everyday life. Le Bénédicité shows a modest, middle-class interior scene, where a mother is laying the table for a meal. She instructs her children to say their grace before eating. The younger of the children can easily appear a girl to the modern eye, if the drum hanging on the child-sized ladderback chair is overlooked, and is indeed identified as such in Gardner. Rand and Bianco, however, quote the inscription on a contemporary engraving, describing the child as a boy, who has not yet been breeched. The quiet, peaceful atmosphere is reinforced by the subdued colour scheme, and the muted lighting. Chardin put much work into the arrangement of the various elements of his paintings. The composition here is meticulous, and the stability created by the triangular structure of the three figures also adds to the tranquillity of the scene.
The only work of this title by Chardin signed and dated in his own hand dates to 1744. It is signed in the bottom left hand corner. Chardin was presented to Louis XV at the Palace of Versailles on 27 November 1740 by Philibert Orry, the king's superintendent of buildings and controller general of finances – Chardin's only meeting with the monarch. This was one of two paintings the artist presented to Louis on that occasion; the Mercure de France reported that the king "received very favourably; these two little works are already well known, having been exhibited at the Salon in the Louvre last August. We mentioned them in the October Mercure, under the title The Laborious Mother and Saying Grace." The work is now in the Hermitage Museum, which it entered between 1763 and 1774 under Catherine II of Russia.
Reception
Chardin is often contrasted to Watteau, whose paintings of aristocratic life differ greatly from those of Chardin's common people. It is not known for certain whether Le Bénédicité was painted with Louis XV in mind, or if it was the king who personally picked the painting out from the 1740 exhibition. In either case, the purchase shows the appeal the painting had to its contemporaries. When it was rediscovered in 1845 - on the eve of the revolutions of 1848 - it had taken on a whole new meaning. To the bourgeois establishment, the works of Chardin now represented a salutary contrast to the 'decadent aristocratic flimsy' of Watteau. In 1848, an anonymous reviewer in the journal Magasin Pittoresque wrote:
