"This book celebrates the recent acquisition for Waddesdon Manor of Jean-Siméon Chardin's early masterpiece, Boy building a House of Cards. The Waddesdon painting is one of four versions of the subject by this great eighteenth-century French master, and is here compared with the other three and with further related paintings and engravings. This close study enables the reader to explore Chardin's treatment of the theme of absorption in work and play, childhood and adolescence."--Page 4 of cover.