''Soap Bubbles'' refers to a series of early 18th-century paintings by French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Done in oil on canvas, ''Bubbles'' - Chardin's first figural painting - depicts a young man blowing a

soap bubble A soap bubble (commonly referred to as simply a bubble) is an extremely thin soap film, film of soap or detergent and water enclosing air that forms a hollow sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few seconds b ...

. Chardin's original work is currently in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, and two later versions of the painting are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum and the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

Description

Though he had been trained as an academic artist, Chardin often shirked away from academic art. Notably, he resisted painting figures using models, instead choosing to paint from memory or conceptually during the early stages of his career. His first painting in which he used a model to paint a picture was ''Soap Bubbles'', thus making said painting his first figural painting. Chardin exhibited his work at the 1739 Paris Salon, though which version of ''Soap Bubbles'' he presented is not known. Some sources speculate that Chardin chose soap bubbles as a subject due to their historical appearance in 17th-century Dutch paintings where they served as allusions to the transience of life.

References

18th-century paintings Paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art {{met-stub