The Provider

The Provider (La Pourvoyeuse), painted in 1739 and now at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, is one of Chardin's finest genre paintings — a servant returning from market with provisions for the household depicted with a dignity and moral gravity that elevates the daily labor of provisioning into something close to sacred activity. His market-return figures, absorbed in their task of carrying food home, embody the domestic virtues of thrift, industry, and care that Chardin's bourgeois and aristocratic patrons admired as the foundation of household order. The Provider was engraved and widely disseminated, spreading Chardin's domestic moral vision through print culture. Ottawa's National Gallery holds this work as one of the finest Canadian examples of French Rococo genre painting.

The figure of the returning servant is rendered with the same contemplative attention Chardin brought to his still lifes, her form emerging from a warm, atmospheric interior through subtle tonal modulation. The market provisions she carries are painted with characteristic attention to material texture.