Chardin is renowned for the quiet charm of his carefully constructed genre scenes and still lifes. His skill at recording the look and feel of objects was astutely commented upon in the 19th century: '... never, perhaps, has the material fascination of painting dealing with objects of no intrinsic interest and transfiguring them by the magic of handling been developed so far... Who has expressed, as he has expressed, the life of inanimate objects?' The Goncourt brothers
Chardin, a carpenter's son, was born in Paris. He was apprenticed to the painter P.-J. Cazes, and also assisted Noel-Nicolas Coypel, passing through the Académie de St-Luc. His output falls into distinguishable phases. In 1728 he was inscribed in the academy as a painter 'of animals and fruits'. In addition to still life, Chardin turned to genre pieces reflecting the domestic values of order, industriousness,education and affection. His major sources were the domestic genre of 17th-century Dutch Art.
From the early 1730s until the early 1750s his output was principally of genre scenes. He then returned to still lifes and, at the end of his career, a few pastel portraits.
Jean-Siméon Chardin
1699 - 1779
Paintings by Jean-Siméon Chardin
A young boy stands at a small wooden table fully absorbed in building a house out of playing cards. He is Jean-Alexandre Le Noir, whose father, Jean-Jacques Le Noir, was a furniture dealer and cabinet-maker, who commissioned several paintings from Chardin.The theme of a child building a house of...
A maid, her face partially hidden by her white bonnet, draws water from a large copper cistern in a scullery with a cobbled floor. As she bends forward, her straight back leads us to an open doorway on the right through which we can see another servant talking to a young child, who stands before...
Not on display
A young child is being taught by an older girl, perhaps in her early teens, who is possibly an elder sister or another relation such as a cousin. Despite the picture’s title, this is a private lesson, probably taking place at home rather than at school. The younger child is most likely a boy, alt...
Imitator of Jean-Siméon Chardin
When this small still life was given to the National Gallery in 1888, it was believed to have been painted by Chardin. However, within 20 years there were already doubts about its authenticity.For a while it was thought that François Bonvin, or one of his contemporaries, had painted the picture,...
Not on display