Girl with a Doll

In the middle of the 18th century French painters began to depict the people of the Third Estate - the commoners - often artisans, working families and the poor. Here we see a small girl from some poor area of Paris, wearing her modest dress and with a serious expression in her far from childish eyes, clutching one of her few and thus treasured toys to her breast. The painting was taken from the life, or perhaps from a drawing taken from the life. Although the artist in fact put little store by portraiture as a genre, his portraits are works of great charm which yet seem to create a very truthful picture of the sitters.