This print engraved by Pierre-Louis de Surugue (1716-1772) was exhibited at the annual Paris Salon in 1743. It is based on a painting (now lost) by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), itself exhibited in 1738 and described as a portrait of Mademoiselle Mahon, daughter of a merchant friend of Chardin.

Though a portrait, the image resembles the genre scenes featuring ordinary people for which Chardin was becoming known and which had popular appeal. When published as a print it was no longer described as a portrait. Many of the prints after Chardin’s paintings featured poems written by his friends. These reflected and expanded on the subject matter. The poem below this print was written by Charles Etienne Pesselier (1711-1763). It relates to an enlightened view of childhood play and reads in translation:
‘Of these frivolous games which occupy this age,
Do not throw scornful glances.
Under what we call by loftier names
What we do is much the same.’
(Translation from Work, Rest & Play, Handlist, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, p.13-14)

The girl plays with a doll dressed in nuns’ clothing, or she is practicing religious contemplation using the knotted girdle of the doll’s costume like a rosary. The doll’s knotted girdle, scapular and white wimple with black veil suggest that she represents a Soeur de l'Annonciade (Sister of the Annunciation). Dolls dressed as nuns were sold by religious orders to raise money. St. Jeanne de Valois, daughter of Louis XI of France, and former wife of the Duke of Orléans (later Louis XII) founded the Soeurs de l'Annonciation in about 1501 after the annulment of her marriage.

Surugue was one of a small number of printmakers admitted to the French Royal Academy. Prints by him and others reproducing Chardin’s paintings were advertised in the fashionable journal Mercure de France and were primarily responsible for Chardin’s work becoming known - the paintings on which they were based often ending up in foreign collections. Connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette bemoaned the prevalence of such prints depicting genre paintings suggesting that their popularity affected the sale of what he called ‘serious’ prints of mythological or history subjects; ‘The public enjoys seeing the events which occur daily in their own homes, and do not hesitate to give those preference over more sophisticated subjects.’ (Fitzwilliam, page 1)