| Reacting against the Rococo style of the time, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin painted small, realistic genre paintings of working-class Parisians. By painting what he knew, he was able to achieve a level of intimacy with his visual scene that few artists of the time displayed. Eventually his work achieved success, even though it was quite different than the mainstream of Parisian painting. The aristocracy began to patronize Chardin's studio, and eventually gave him an apartment in the Louvre, where he lived out his days painting as his eyesight weakened through his old age. |