Nature morte aux instruments de musique (violon et vielle)

On a plain table against a dark ground lie a hurdy-gurdy with its crank, a violin resting on its side with the bow laid across the strings, and a curling roll of sheet music, arranged with the quiet exactness of a Chardin. Nicolas-Henri Jeaurat de Bertry, born in Paris in 1728 and trained by his uncle, the history painter Étienne Jeaurat, devoted himself to still lifes, and the musical-instrument picture — a type with faint vanitas overtones, for sound dies as quickly as life — was a genre he made his own in the middle of the eighteenth century. This canvas, dated 1756, hangs in the Musée Carnavalet among works devoted to the history of Paris.