Jean‐Siméon Chardin 
1699–1779

Francesca Whitlum‐Cooper, 2018

Extracted from:

Humphrey Wine, The Eighteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).
Humphrey Wine and Virginia Napoleone, Former Owners of the Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings in the National Gallery: Appendix to ‘The National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings’ (London: National Gallery Company, 2018).

Denis Diderot called Chardin ‘the great magician’. Writing of Chardin’s submissions to the Salon of 1763, Diderot proclaimed: ‘Oh Chardin! it’s not white, red, black that you mix on your palette: it’s the very substance of things, it’s air and light that you put on the tip of your brush and fix to your canvas.’ This extravagant praise reflects Chardin’s position as the century’s leading proponent of still life, as well as a masterful painter of genre.

Chardin was born in Paris in the parish of Saint‐Sulpice, the son of a billiard table maker. His early apprenticeships are thought to have been in the studios of history painters Pierre‐Jacques Cazes and Noël‐Nicolas Coypel, before his reception as master painter at the Académie de Saint‐Luc in February 1724. According to Charles‐Nicolas Cochin’s biography of the artist, Chardin decided to present himself to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in September 1728 having been encouraged by praise from a number of fellow artists. Exceptionally, he was admitted and received by the Académie royale on the same day. His two reception pieces –The Buffet and The Stingray – are both in the Louvre: writing of the latter, Cochin claimed that Chardin ‘never produced a painting with more impressive colours, or more magical execution and effect’.

Chardin was received by the Académie as a painter of still lifes – an artist ‘skilled in animals and fruits’. This was the lowliest genre in the Académie’s hierarchy, and not one from which an artist would expect to make either great financial gains or a major reputation. Indeed, Chardin did not receive his first commissions until 1730 and it was not until 1731, following an eight‐year engagement, that he was sufficiently financially secure to marry his first wife, Marguerite Saintard. Nevertheless, he continued to pursue still‐life painting before switching to genre painting around 1733–48. This is the period to which both NG 4077 and NG 4078 belong. Although he won significant praise for these figural works, the years around 1750 heralded an emphatic return to still life. He was to tackle the human form again during his final years in a series of remarkable pastel portraits, a choice of medium that may have been prompted by problems with his eyesight caused by the lead contained in oil paint. Two extraordinary self portraits in pastel by Chardin are conserved at the Louvre.

In spite of its lowly subject matter, Chardin’s work was admired by a diverse audience and sought after by the most discerning collectors of his day. He received commissions from Louis XV, Queen Luise Ulrike of Sweden and Empress Catherine II of Russia, as well as from the French elite and international connoisseurs. He frequently exhibited his paintings at the Salon, where he was also widely represented in print: from May 1738 onwards engravings after his work by various artists proliferated. Over the course of his 50‐year career, Chardin’s responsibilities within the Académie grew along with his reputation: in March 1755 he was unanimously elected Académie treasurer and on 23 August that year – just five days before the Salon opened – he was charged with hanging the entire exhibition, a responsibility he would retain for 22 years.

During his own lifetime and in subsequent scholarship, Chardin has rightly been regarded as an innovator of both still‐life and genre painting. A far cry from the grandeur of preceding still‐life masters such as Alexandre‐François Desportes, Chardin’s most successful still‐life paintings place everyday objects against simple, often monochromatic backgrounds that showcase his skill in colouring and composition. Bowl of Plums, a Peach and Water Pitcher of 1728–30 (Washington, Phillips Collection) and Glass of Water and Coffee Pot of 1760 (Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art) offer two examples of this masterful simplicity from different ends of his career. Similarly, Chardin’s genre scenes mark a departure from Dutch seventeenth‐century genre paintings, which were often humorous or laden with morality, to quieter, more contemplative depictions of everyday life. It is worth noting that his artistic process was meticulous, with the result that only about 190 works are known from his 50 years of production. He often repeated compositions two or three times, as with the three versions of The Return from Market (Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada; Berlin, Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten, Schloss Charlottenburg; and Paris, Louvre), or offered variations on a theme, as with NG 4078.

By the time of his death at the age of 80 in 1779, Chardin was financially comfortable. He had received his first pension from the king in 1752 and this support had grown along with his responsibilities at the Académie. Since 1757 he had held accommodation at the Louvre, where he lived with his second wife, Françoise‐Marguerite Pouget, whom he had married in 1744. The Louvre apartment was not only a mark of distinction but also signified a major financial saving, as it allowed the Chardins to rent out their other property. Chardin’s family life, however, was not without difficulty: having tried to follow in his father’s footsteps as an artist his eldest son Jean‐Pierre drowned in a canal in Venice at the age of forty, probably in an act of suicide. Chardin’s enduring magic is surely tied to the extraordinary beauty with which he endowed ordinary objects. The inventory made after his first wife’s death recorded several of the household items that appeared in his paintings. Indeed, some of the earliest scholarship on Chardin came about through a desire to connect the painter with the objects he so exquisitely depicts.

FWC