JEAN-BAPTISTE CHARPENTIER (PARIS, 1728 – PARIS, 1806) A flower seller and a painting seller in front of a stall c. 1790 Oil on canvas 38 x 46 cm Traces of a signature in the lower left-hand corner (...ntier) Everything here seems to have been captured on the spot. We catch these figures in the spontaneity of their daily activities and delight in imagining their adventures. In the foreground, the eye is drawn to two women in the midst of an altercation, judging by the demeanour of the older woman, who has her back to us. With her hands on her hips, she is vehemently rebuking a young flower seller, who turns towards her, taken aback. Could the basket of vegetables, overturned on the ground, be the cause of this quarrel? Leaving this first, light-drenched scene behind, the eye discerns in the background a man being supported by a woman as she helps him along. Could he be drunk? For we are here at the entrance to a tavern, recognisable by its sign and the two jugs hanging from the frame of a canvas awning. At the back of this tavern, two other street vendors, having set down their baskets and hampers, are drinking leaning on the bar. Finally, back on the street, we glimpse, on the right in the half-light, a art dealer whom a young man is helping to secure the frames onto the hook of his packing frame. The atmosphere is picturesque rather than theatrical. Everything is rendered with a lively brushstroke that lingers on minute details; the palette of vivid colours with porcelain-like hues lends these little scenes a cheerful and detached air. We observe, we are amused, we marvel at the details. The light falls here and there on the groups, sequencing their discovery and establishing a hierarchy in the order of their appearance. Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the Elder (1728–1806) was a French portrait painter at the court of the king, who became famous for his portraits of Marie-Antoinette and members of the Penthièvre family. Although he began by painting genre scenes, he soon turned to portraiture of the aristocracy, before returning to genre painting after the Revo- lution. Admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1760, he became a professor there, then an adviser. After its closure in 1777, he continued to exhibit at the Salon de la Correspondance of the Royal Academy and became friends with Jean-Baptiste Greuze. When the French Revolution abolished the Royal Academy, he exhibited at the Salon du Louvre from 1791 to 1799. His entry into the service of Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre, afforded him an enviable position, evidence of which remains in the large full-length portrait of the Duke held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes and two paintings of great refinement held at the Palace of Versailles: *Portrait of the Prince and Princess Louise-Adélaïde in a Garden* (Versailles) and *The Cup of Chocolate* (*The Family of the Duke of Penthièvre*), dated 1768. In addition to these princely portraits, the small genre paintings constitute the most delightful part of Charpentier’s oeuvre. The painter became the chronicler of lively scenes populated by small traders and children at play. His paintings, with their unpretentious titles, are always constructed like small theatrical performances, as in this *Flower Seller and Picture Seller in front of a stall*, which may well be the *Market Scene* presented by Charpentier at the 1799 Salon (no. 40), of which all trace has been lost.