Based on Jean-Siméon Chardin’s *The Antique-Dealer Monkey*

The original painting, together with its companion piece, *The Painter Monkey*, which were exhibited at the 1740 Salon, were acquired by the Louvre in 1852 during the dispersal of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne’s collection, which was sold following the sculptor’s death in 1778. *The Painter Monkey* has since disappeared from the Louvre’s collections, but *The Antique-Dealer Monkey* remains, of which there are several smaller versions (Chartres Museum of Fine Arts) and large-format versions (Sotheby’s auction, New York, 24. January 2008, Christie’s auction, New York, 9 July 2010, Christie’s auction, London, 9 July 2014).

The copy held at the Château de la Motte-Tilly differs in many respects from the original painting. The dressing gown is grey, lending a far less warm tone to the painting as a whole, whilst the medal cabinet in the background has disappeared. However, the rendering of the monkey’s face, as well as that of the books and scattered sheets of paper in the foreground, is of high quality, in a format even smaller than that of the version at the Chartres Museum. Whereas Chardin creates a sense of ‘blur’ on the pages of the open book or where the drawing extends beyond the books, the copyist has here sought to create a meticulous trompe-l’œil effect on this still life in the foreground, in a spirit entirely at odds with Chardin’s magic.

This copy bears witness to the enduring popularity of these two works well beyond the^18th century.  The explanation offered by the poet Charles-Étienne Pesselier, a friend of Chardin’s—who argued that the collector-monkey ought to turn away from his medals and books if he wished to keep abreast of the latest developments of his time—somewhat diminishes the work’s significance. There is certainly a touch of irony—perhaps moralising—in this portrayal of the connoisseur who needs nothing but books and a stove within the sanctuary of his contemplation.

Yet the hushed atmosphere of the collector’s study still delights the viewer. Dressed in a dressing gown—the emblem of the scholar and man of letters—the monkey is so wholly absorbed in his contemplation that one cannot help but think of the words of Denis Diderot, thirty years later, in his *Regrets on My Old Dressing Gown* (or *A Word to Those Who Have More Taste Than Fortune*) from * * (1772): ‘Why did I not keep it? It was made for me; I was made for it. It moulded itself to every curve of my body without constricting it; I looked picturesque and handsome.’

Florence Boulerie and Katalin Bartha-Kovács, *The Monkey in the^17th and^18th Centuries: A Figure in Art, a Literary Character and a Scientific Curiosity*, Paris , Hermann, 2019.