'The Scullery Maid' by Jean-Baptiste Chardin
This audio clip describes the painting The Scullery Maid by Jean-Baptiste Chardin (1699–1779).
It has been created for use as part of our primary school resource, The Superpower of Looking, in order to support pupils with blindness or visual impairment to take part in the lessons.
Explore the painting further in our resource, A girl scrubbing pots and pans by Chardin.
Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699–1779)
Full audio description text
A scullery maid was a young woman who worked for a rich family cleaning the dishes and scrubbing pots and pans. This scullery maid was painted in 1738 by a French artist called Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin. He's captured this everyday scene in shades of brown oil paint. It is just under half a metre tall and nearly 37 centimetres wide.
To the right of the picture and reaching almost its full height, the young woman stands close to us, side on, dressed in clothes of cream linen – a baggy shirt and a full skirt. She has a neat upturned nose, pink lips and rosy cheeks. Her brown hair is mostly hidden under a cap and a medal hangs from a thin strip of blue fabric knotted around her neck. Her skirt is long, ending just above her ankles. A blue felt underskirt pokes out beneath and she wears dark leather shoes.
She's standing on the flag-stoned floor of the scullery beside a wooden barrel that sits in the middle of the picture. It's as tall as her hip and has a round knot hole in one of its vertical slats. The wall of the scullery behind her is a plain grey-brown colour with no windows or furniture. A large gleaming copper pan on the floor leans up against the barrel, perhaps to drain. The back of the pan rests against an earthenware chimney pot at the far left of the image. This might have been used as a stand. With her sleeves rolled up and a stiff apron of cream-coloured fabric protecting her skirt, the maid leans over the barrel. She dips a long-handled frying pan into the top and is scrubbing at it with bits of straw. The outside of the pan is black – its inside is silvery where it's been cleaned.
Lying on the floor are other items she might have washed earlier. A shallow metal skimmer, used to skim the surface of a cooking liquid, lies upturned in front of the copper pan. It is a darker coppery colour and has a long thin handle in an even darker metal. A pottery bowl, with glaze the colour of chocolate, sits in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture. It has a lip and a handle as though it is used for pouring liquid.
Although she is working, the scullery maid doesn't seem to be concentrating on her task – her gaze is distant, her hands moving automatically as if her thoughts lie elsewhere.
