Among the most admired still-life painters of all times, Chardin was undoubtedly the greatest of the eighteenth century.
However, after his death in 1779 oblivion rapidly overtook his name and art until his rediscovery in the mid-nineteenth century by the ‘Realist’ critic Théophile Thoré, also the champion of Vermeer, and the Goncourt brothers who revived the taste for French rococo art.
Chardin’s first publicly exhibited works were still lifes and it was remarkable that a painter in this ‘lowly’ genre should be admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture as he was in 1728 with his presentation piece of The Ray (musée du Louvre, Paris). He supplemented his income from still-life painting with the production of genre scenes, often depicting quiet domestic interiors or children at play. He exhibited from 1737 at the Salon, whose exhibitions he would later organize and won the approval both of the King Louis XV and the influential critic Dennis Diderot. His still lifes ranged from large, complex compositions such as the 1729 Buffet (musée du Louvre, Paris) and the Still Life with Attributes of the Arts (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) of 1766 to simple, small still lifes of fruit such as the Bowl of Strawberries (Private Collection) and paintings of simple kitchen implements with basic provisions such as eggs or fish.
Selected artworks
Notable Exhibitions
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Chardin, 7 September – 22 November 1999; travelled to Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum am Ehrenhof, 5 December 1999 – 20 February 2000; London, Royal Academy of Arts, 11 March – 29 May 2000; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 27 June – 3 September 2000. Curated by Pierre Rosenberg.
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Chardin: 1699–1779, 29 January – 30 April 1979; travelled to Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 6 June – 12 August 1979 and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 18 September – 19 November 1979. Curated by Pierre Rosenberg.
Books on Chardin
Pierre Rosenberg and Florence Bruyant, Chardin, exh. cat., London, 2000.
Jonathan Crary, ‘The Camera Obscura and Its Subject’ in Techniques of the Observer, Cambridge and London, 1990.
Philip Conisbee, Chardin, Oxford, 1985.
Pierre Rosenberg, Tout l’Oeuvre Peint de Chardin, Paris, 1983.
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, French Eighteenth-Century Painters: Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, La Tour, Greuze, Fragonard, 1880-2, trans. Robin Ironside, Ithaca, 1981.