A young girl, wearing a blue bibbed apron watches the ball she has just tossed into the air and readies her other hand to pick up the four knucklebones–the small bones from the heel of a sheep–lying on the tabletop. The eighteenth-century viewer would see the pair of scissors propped conspicuously at the edge of the table as a thinly veiled sign of disapproval: this girl should be attending to her sewing rather than wasting her time playing knucklebones. An inscription, which accompanied a print of the painting made shortly after its completion, speaks to the age of adolescence so tenderly expressed in this image: Already grown and full of charm It ill becomes you, dear Lisette. To play alone at knucklebones, From now henceforth you are made To make a young admirer happy By deigning to grant him some part In your games. Although he lived in the Rococo era with its emphasis on lighthearted elegance and pleasure, Chardin chose to represent simple interior scenes and still lifes in a manner reminiscent of Dutch painting of the previous century. Such commonplace subject as this drawn from contemporary life, were admired by the realist Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, and the Impressionists.