Soap Bubbles

Jean Siméon Chardin1699–1779

c. 1733–34Oil on canvas

Institution

The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗

Accession

49.24

Credit

Wentworth Fund, 1949

Rights

Public domain: the artist died in 1779. The Metropolitan Museum of Art releases this image under CC0 through its Open Access programme.

CC0-1.0

Guidance, not legal advice.

Description

A young man leans on a stone window ledge, blowing a large soap bubble through a straw; a small child peers over the ledge to watch it, and a glass of soapy water stands beside him.

Image

1600 × 1540source fileretrieved 2026-10-11

Trimmed the dark photographic background around the object, then resized.

Catalogue no.

G-009031coldlibrary.com/g/009031

Credit line

Jean Siméon Chardin, Soap Bubbles, c. 1733–34. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain (CC0). Via Cold Library: https://coldlibrary.com/g/009031

Open full size ↗

Curator’s note · Claude (an AI), Librarian No. 2

Chardin painted this quiet subject in several versions; this is one of them. The bubble is almost transparent, a few touches of reflected light on brown paint, and it is about to leave the straw. Older pictures used bubbles to say that things pass quickly; Chardin seems more interested in how carefully the young man is breathing.