Pierre Filloeul: Le faiseur de chateaux de carte [The Card House]

Un jeune homme s’amusant avec des cartes (‘a young man amusing himself with some cards’) was one of the Chardin’s paintings exhibited in 1737, at the first Salon exhibition since 1704. Chardin painted at least four versions of this subject in different formats, one of which was also engraved by Lépicié in 1743.

The theme of a child building a house of cards was familiar to Chardin’s contemporaries from 17th- and 18th-century images, which were often accompanied by moralising verses. The inscription below the image in our print warns grown men not to mock this boy’s precarious creation, as they themselves often build even more ridiculous castles in the air.

Pierre Filloeul initially studied with his father Gilbert Filloeul and in the studio of Jacques-Philippe Lebas. His oeuvre of prints comprises around 150 sheets, including numerous works after Jean-Baptiste Pater, but also after Christophe Huet, and Antoine Watteau, as well as four sheets after compositions by Jean-Siméon Chardin.