NARRATOR:
Born into modest circumstances, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin had little interest in the grand subjects of history painting and portraiture. His audience was the growing French middle-class, whose everyday sights and activities were the subjects of his observations.
These two still-lifes from about 1730 are arresting and charming, because their subjects are as ordinary as they are unusual. Few artists at the time would have considered them worthy of depicting. The display of food and kitchen items may seem casual. But in fact, it is very deliberately planned. At the right, in Still Life with Cooking Utensils, Chardin creates a grand pyramid from humble objects, leading the eye from the white cloth on the left up to the hook that holds a large piece of meat and back down to the roots of the green onions.
On the left, Still Life with Fowl is more complex, but equally balanced by carefully juxtaposed colors, shapes, and textures. Everything seems in perfect equilibrium. The pigment is applied in thick layers, expressing its physicality and giving some of these objects actual substance.
Trained by minor artists, Chardin eventually became the finest still life and genre painter of 18th-century Europe. The great portraitist Nicolas Largillière, recognizing his exceptional gifts as a colorist, sponsored his election to the Royal Academy as a painter of “animals and fruit.” After his death in 1779, Chardin was soon forgotten, only to be rediscovered by the 19th-century masters Manet and Cézanne, who valued his frank realism and keen artistic eye.
To hear more about paintings of everyday life in the 18th century, press 1721.
Still Life with Fowl
c. 1728-30
Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779)
On View
The food and kitchen utensils in this painting appears casually arranged. These displays are, however, based on carefully calculated visual relationships. In Still Life with Fowl, the curving forms of the mortar and pestle echo that of the green jug. The scene betokens an intimate domesticity, a place of blessing related to the fundaments of human life.
Chardin’s contemporaries recognized that his method of applying paint and color was unique and unprecedented. Denis Diderot, an Enlightenment philosopher and art writer, said of Chardin in a 1765 Salon review, “it is the air and light you take with the tip of your brush and fix to your canvas…
[your work] exists between nature and art.” Chardin’s skill at imparting the haptic, or tactile, qualities of motionless objects through the steady emphasis of his brush, rather than a faithful reproduction of the details, promotes a sense of quiet harmony.
Details
- Artist Name: Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779)
- Title: Still Life with Fowl
- Date: c. 1728-30
- Medium: Oil on canvas (one of a pair)
- Dimensions: 15-3/4 x 12-3/8 in. (40.0 x 31.4 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1969.38.03.2.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
MM. Laneuville and Henry, Paris (sale, Paris, 9-11 April 1822, lot 85).
Private Collection, London (Leon Michel-Levy?)
[Georges Wildenstein collection, Schloss Moyre bei Colombiers by 1921];
Hermann Goering;
Recovered by Allied Forces, where they were recorded as nos. 7392 and 7393 at the Munich Central Collecting Point, returned to;
[Wildenstein collection];
[Wildenstein Galleries, New York, sold 8 June 1957 to];
Robert Ellis Simon, Los Angeles, gift to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Private Collection, London (Leon Michel-Levy?)
[Georges Wildenstein collection, Schloss Moyre bei Colombiers by 1921];
Hermann Goering;
Recovered by Allied Forces, where they were recorded as nos. 7392 and 7393 at the Munich Central Collecting Point, returned to;
[Wildenstein collection];
[Wildenstein Galleries, New York, sold 8 June 1957 to];
Robert Ellis Simon, Los Angeles, gift to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Paintings by J.-B. S. Chardin
- New York, Wildenstein Galleries, 1926-11 to
- Goncourt, E.; and J. Goncourt, L'art du XVIIIe siècle, p. 187
- Goldstein, N., Design and Composition, p. 209
- Elsen, A., Purposes of Art,
- Guiffrey, J., J.B.S. Chardin,nos. 10, 11
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum,1989, p. 92
- Stechow, W., Catalogue of European and American Paintings and Sculpture in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, p. 33
- Wildenstein, George, Chardin,nos. 933, 943, pl. XCII, figs. 127, 128
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best,2010, cat. 61B p. 251
- Wildenstein, Daniel, Chardin,nos. 62, 63, figs. 29, 30
- Furst, H., Apollo,fig. VI p. 32
- Rosenberg, Pierre, Chardin: 1699-1779, pp. 160-163
- Furst, H., The Connoisseur, p. 16
- Russell, S., Art in the World,repr. , no. 279 p. 218
- Martin, K., Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin,figs., 1, 2 pp. 20-22
- Morse, John D., Old Master Paintings in North America,1979, p. 47
- Conisbee, Philip, Chardin, pp. 90-91
- Martin, K., Fetschrift Kurt Bauch,no. 9 pp. 240-243
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