 Hi, I'm Cindy Kang. I'm associate curator at the Barnes Foundation, and we are here in this picture plunged into a dark, cool kitchen room downstairs in a relatively wealthy home in Paris in about the 1730s or so. You see a woman at the center who works in the household and she's filling an earthenware jug with water from a copper urn. And she's surrounded by an array of buckets and pans. You see at the left here this copper pot that's on top of a kind of artfully tumbling white cloth, which is on top of a barrel. There's firewood there next to the pot and there's a broom leaning against the urn. And then topping it all off is a rack of meat. It looks like a rack of ribs and a chop. And if you follow the line of the woman's back, you get to an open doorway at the right side of the picture. And you can see that you can walk up a few stairs and get into this room or hallway where you see another woman who works in the household wielding a broom and perhaps minding the child who is standing there in the doorway looking out at us, the viewers, and bringing us into the scene. So this tranquil domestic scene was executed by a French artist named Chaldain. And one thing I love about Chaldain's paintings is how they seem so natural and truthful while being totally constructed and very meticulously composed. So this painting feels like a glimpse into the daily life of 18th century Paris. And yet Chaldain has clearly arranged the shapes and the forms to create a sense of stability in the composition, a sense of rhythm, and to lead your eye through the painting. So there's the rhyming of all the rounded forms, the urn, the buckets, the pans, the pots. There's also this wonderful pairing of the orthogonal parallel lines of the brooms. So on the right, there's the woman wielding a broom. We know she's wielding a broom, but we don't see the end of the broom, right? But we do see the end of the broom on the left here near the urn. And then if you look at the floor, you can see that the floor is cobblestone. And it's very carefully squared in perspective. So it gives you a sense of how composed and how planned this composition was. Another thing that I love about Chaldain is the way he gives attention to texture and the way he paints the surfaces, the material surfaces of things. It really adds to and lends to the sense of reality and truthfulness of his pictures. So if you look at the gleaming surface of the copper urn and how that contrasts with the soft marbled flesh of the meat, you can even see here in this detail the way the bloody meat reflects off the hard metallic surface. And look at the way that Chaldain lays on white paint. It really gives you the sense of sinews and bone and fat. Chaldain was actually well known for his handling of white paint. And this is all mainly concentrated in the bonnet and the jacket of the woman in the center. So first of all, Chaldain really makes this white paint stand out by putting it against a dark brown palette, but also by setting it off against cool colors like the blue apron. And this detail that I love, look at her skirt, this red and blue striped skirt, it's such a festive outfit and it really pulls the composition together. But let's go back to the white. This granular texture conveys this sense of starched and coarsely woven cloth and the dense application of paint with a very loaded brush also conveys a sense of the artist labor, which in turn corresponds to this picturing of the woman's labor. So Chaldain was a very slow worker and painting was a painstaking arduous process for him. So when he hit on a composition that worked, he often painted several of them. And this one is no exception. So the first version of this painting is actually in the National Museum in Stockholm in Sweden. And when Chaldain made it, he actually made it as part of a pair. And he exhibited this pair in 1737 at the Salon in Paris, which was the main official exhibition. And this pair proved to be so popular that he did a couple versions of them. And Barnes, in fact, lucky for us, bought a pair. So he, Barnes hung them in room three as a pair. So you get to see woman doing wash on the left and woman drawing water from a water urn at the right to the painting. I think Chaldain's work was so appreciated because it provides a sense of respite. Looking at these paintings feels so restful. I love the sense of quiet in his paintings. So even though there are indications of sound, you know, there's the rustling of the broom that the woman is wielding in the doorway. There's the rush of water that is feeling the earthenware jug. There is still a sense of a suspended moment in time that goes on forever. I think also this painting revels in the textures and sounds and rhythms of daily life. And so I hope it helps you value the beauty in the mundane and humble in your daily life these days. So that wraps up today's version of Barnes Takeout. Thank you for watching. I'm Tom Collins, Newbauer Family Executive Director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.