A young child is being taught by an older girl, perhaps in her early teens, who is possibly an elder sister or another relation such as a cousin. The younger child is most likely a boy, although we cannot be entirely sure. The children appear to be from a middle-class family, which is well provided for but not ostentatiously wealthy.
This class particularly valued education, especially literacy, which was no longer confined to the nobility and professional classes. Although Chardin is extolling work and study over playful time-wasting, any moralising purpose to his painting is very understated. Instead, his attention is on a quiet moment of interaction between two individuals.
She is wearing an indoor nightcap decorated with a ribbon, known as a dormeuse , and a scarf and pinafore over her dress. The younger child is probably a boy, although we cannot be entirely sure. He wears a protective headdress known as a bourlet , which is also worn by children who are clearly boys in other paintings by Chardin. The book is partly hidden by a loose sheet of paper covered in marks. The schoolmistress uses a sharp metal pointer, perhaps a knitting needle, positioned near the centre of the composition, her gesture repeated by the tiny hand of her young pupil.
Their clothes and the undecorated table locate them within the domestic space of a middle-class home. Education was available to girls, even if it was to prepare them for motherhood and domestic duties. But Enlightenment thinkers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also extolled the importance of childhood and cultivating young minds. In effect, both children in the painting are learning.
Dutch genre paintings often have a didactic message, but although Chardin is extolling work and study over playful time-wasting, any moralising purpose to his painting is very low key.
