Jean Siméon Chardin

Life and work

A master stroke

Jean Siméon Chardin is born in Paris the November 2nd 1699, of a father craftsman, manufacturer of Billard S. Mis at share the fact that he was the pupil of Cazes (painter of History) and perhaps that he was advised by No5el Nicolas Coypel, one does not have any certainty in connection with his formation before the February 6th 1724, date on which he is received with the Académie of Saint-Luc with the title of Master - title to which it renonça in 1729.

According to the Frères Goncourt, Coypel would have called upon Chardin to paint a rifle in a table of hunting, which would have given him the taste for dead natures.

It is probable that two of its tables, the Line and the Dresser were noticed by two members of the royal Académie with the Exposition of Youth, Dauphine place, in 1728: Louis Boullongne, First Painter of the King, and Nicolas de Largillière one of the best French painters of dead nature.

These two tables are the pieces of reception of Chardin to the royal Academy, and are now with the Musée of Louvre.

Jean Siméon Chardin becomes thus painter academician “in the talent of the animals and the fruits”, i.e. at the lower level of the hierarchy of the recognized kinds.

the Line is the subject of a unanimous admiration and a fascination since the 18th century. Let us note that the Dresser is one of the first works gone back to Chardin. Henri Matisse will copy these two tables in 1896; they are currently with the Matisse Museum of Cateau-Cambrésis.

Rare thing at Jean Siméon Chardin, an live animal appears in the Line as in the Dresser . The artist paints very slowly, reconsiders his work unceasingly, which is hardly compatible with the representation of live animals. It is as probable as Chardin has dreaded that one compares his works with those of the two Masters of time “in the talent of the animals”: Alexandre-François Desportes (1661 - 1743) and Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1661 - 1778). This last had preceded Chardin with the Academy by Saint-Luc in 1708 and with the royal Academy in 1717. (On this subject, to see low.)

The year 1731 is marked by particularly important events. Jean Siméon marries Marguerite Saintard seven years after a marriage contract signed with it. The father of the artist dies a little later and his/her son Jean Pierre is born in November. This same year, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Van Loo (1684 - 1745), it takes part in the restoration of the frescos of the gallery François {{Ier}} with the Château of Fontainebleau.

His Marguerite wife dies in 1735. He dies on December 6th, 1779 has Paris

Scenes of kind: a gained challenge

New works

The first tables with figures of Chardin were painted in 1733 at the latest. Chardin realizes that it will not be able indefinitely to sell of dead natures. It is necessary for him to become Master in another “talent”.

In its Abecedario , a contemporary of Chardin, Mariette, pays the following anecdote: Chardin pointing out to one of his/her friends painters, Joseph Aved (1702 - 1766), that an amount of money even rather weak was always good to take for a ordered portrait when the artist was not very known, Aved would have answered him:

“Yes, if a portrait were as easy to make as a saveloy. ”

The artist was put at the challenge to paint another thing that dead natures. But it was not the only reason to change “talent”. Mariette adds:

“This word made impression on him and, less taking it as one mocking remark that like a truth, it made a return on its talent, and more it examined it, more it convinced itself that it would never draw great party from it. It feared, and perhaps with reason, that, painting only inanimate and not very interesting objects, one did not weary soon his productions, and that, wanting to try to paint live animals, it did not remain too much below MM. Desportes and Oudry, two frightening competitors, which had already taken the initiative and whose reputation was established. ”

Chardin thus will be devoted to the scenes of kind, which will not be without difficulties for him. The amateurs of painting of the 18th century snuff more than all imagination. However, it is the faculty which was more the lacking with Chardin. It has evil to compose its tables, and it is what explains partly why when it finds, after long and patient research, a structure which is appropriate to him, it reproduces it in several works. This period of the life of Chardin opens on two showpieces:

a woman occupied to seal a letter (146 X 147 cm, Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz). This table is exposed places Dauphine in 1734, and the Mercure de France describes it as follows:

“Largest an young graduate represents who waits impatiently until one gives him light to seal a letter, the figures are large like nature. ”

a woman drawing from water to the fountain , known as the Fountain or the Woman with the fountain (38 X 43 cm, Stockholm Nationalmuseum). As in the preceding table, an opening in the wall of the bottom, on the right, brings clearness and shows a secondary scene. However no bringing together is possible with the Dutch tables: the interiors of Chardin are closed and the windows are very rare.

Chardin exposes this last painting to the Living room of Louvre in 1737, like the Washing machine (37 X 42,5 cm, Stockholm Nationalmuseum), the young girl at the wheel (81 X 65 cm, Paris, particular collection) and the House of cards (82 X 66 cm, Washington, National Gallery off Art). Then the exposures will follow one another almost every year until its death.

Particularly in the Young girl at the wheel , the painter does not show any will to give an impression of movement. Solidified in an attitude, the fixed glance, the little girl is posing for Jean Siméon and its attitude betrays almost the monitoring whose it is the object: “Does not move especially”. This immobility, on the other hand, seems natural in the House of cards , of the fact even of the topic which is appropriate so well for Chardin that it carries out four compositions with few alternatives on this subject. Then the exposures will follow one another almost every year until its death.

Presented to Louis XV with Versailles in 1740 by Philibert Orry, Superintendent of the Building industries of the King (kind of Minister for the Culture) and General inspector of Finances, Chardin offers two tables to the sovereign. One can read on this occasion in the Mercure de France :

“Sunday November 27th 1740, Mr. Chardin of the royal Academy of painting and sculpture, was presented to the king by Mr. general inspector with two tables which Its Majesty accepted very favorably; these two pieces are already known, having been exposed to the Living room of Louvre in the month of last August. We spoke about it in Mercury about October, under the title: the hard Mother and the Grace . ”

It will be the only meeting of Chardin with Louis XV.

The glance of the 19th century: Chardin, painter of the middle-class virtues

The Grace (49,5 X 38,5 cm, Paris, Louvre) and the hard Mère (49 X 39 cm, even museum) fell into the lapse of memory ten years after death from Louis XV, then were redécouverts in 1845: the middle-class century appreciates the representations of the middle-class virtues which he opposes to the presumedly general dissolution of manners of the nobility.

The anonymous author of an article of volume XVI of the Picturesque Magasin writes in 1848:

“With Watteau lunches on grass, the walks with the moonlight, the capricious beauty of the day with the elegant rider of its choice, the dances under broken into leaf of the shepherdesses and the titrated shepherds; but in Chardin the honest one and peaceful interior, the mother who brushes the dress of her son before sending it to the school, the mother learning with bégayer the name from God to his small brooded. He imitates the calm one with calm, the joy with joy, dignity with dignity. It seems that one century cannot contain two so different stories; however they are côtoient. Each one had its historian, both men of genius. The brilliance shimmer of Watteau too often eclipsed the soft clearness of Chardin. Dazzled by aggravating the coquettery of the marchioness, hardly one stops in front of the humble middle-class woman; and yet, which softer mystery than this suave painting containing truths treasures of the human life: honor, order, economy! ”

And if the author, in the same passage, speaks about Chardin like poet with the soft colors, it is only one short interlude before being filled with wonder in front of the representation of its female ideal:

“It is the type of these thousands of other women to which the man rigid, honest, entrust their honor, their joy, their name, their children, and whose presence is a blessing for the threshold that they once passed. ”

Dead natures of maturity

In 1744, Chardin marries Francoise Marguerite Pouget (1707 - 1791). It is 45 years old, it has 37 of them.

Soon Chardin will be protected and encouraged by an important character, the marquis de Vandières (1727 - 1781), future marquis of Marigny and Menars, Directeur of the Building industries of 1751 with 1773. It is him which will allow obtaining a pension for Jean Siméon.

“On the report/ratio that I made in Roy Mister your talents and of your Lights, Its Majesty grants to you in the distribution of its graces for Arts, a pension of 500 pounds, I inform you with all the more of pleasure, which you will always find me very laid out to oblige you, in the occasions which will be able to arise and which will depend on me in the future. ”
(Letter of the September 7th 1752, orthography and punctuation of the time)

His/her son Jean Pierre gains in 1754 the First Price of the Academy and between with the Royal School of the protected pupils. In 1757, it receives its Patent to go to continue its studies of painting to Rome. Removed by English corsairs with broad of Genoa in 1762, then released, Jean Pierre in 1767 in Paris dies, unless it did not commit suicide with Venice.

It is named Trésorier of the Academy in 1755, and two years after Louis XV a housing in the Galleries of Louvre grants to him, that of which it is shown very proud. Marigny, whose benevolence with regard to Chardin will never be contradicted, is at the origin of this honor returned to the painter and itself informs some.

“I teach you with pleasure, Sir, that Roy grants to you the vacant housing with the Galleries of Louvre by the death of S. Marteau, your talents had put to you with range to hope for this grace of Roy, I am well ease to have been able to contribute to make it pour on you. I am, Sir, Your very humble and very obeying servant. ”
(Letter of the March 13rd 1757, orthography and punctuation of the time)

One imagines without Chardin sorrow enjoying with delight the advertisement of this distinction in front of his fellow-members, in full meeting of the Academy:

“Mr. Chardin, Conseiller, Trésorier of the Academy, made share with the Company of the honourable grace that Roy has faitte to him by granting a housing to him to the Galleries of Louvre. The Company testified to the intérest which it takes with all the advantages that its merit and its talents get to him. ”
(Statement of the meeting of the April 2nd 1757, orth. time)

The inventory after death of the goods of Chardin reveals that this apartment comprised 4 rooms, a dining room, a kitchen, a corridor, a cellar and a support under the staircase.

Very occupied by its functions of treasurer and by responsibility which falls on to him of the arrangement of the tables for the Living room of the Academy (office known as of “tapestry maker” which will be worth contentions with Oudry to him), Chardin, which again devotes to its first “talent” since 1748, composes more and more of dead nature. It always exposes paintings of kind but cease to create some: they are, most of the time works former or alternatives.

Dead natures that it exposes during this time are rather different from the first. The subjects are very varied from it: game, fruits, bouquets of flower, pots, bottles, glasses, etc Chardin seem to be interested more in volumes and the composition that with a concerned verism of the detail, even of the effects of horn the eye. The colors are pasted. It is more attentive with the reflections, with the light: he works sometimes in three tables at the same time in front of the same objects, to collect the light of the morning, the middle of day and the afternoon.

During this period the style of Chardin will evolve/move:

“In the first time, the artist painted by broad keys which it lays out side by side without melting them between them (…) ; after having during a few years, towards 1755 - 1757, multiplied and miniaturized the objects which it moves away from the spectator, tempted to organize more ambitious compositions, it will grant an increasingly large place to the reflections, the transparencies, the “dissolve”; more and more it will be the overall effect which will worry the artist, a synthetic vision who will make emerge from a half-light mysterious objects and fruits, summarized in their permanence. ”
(Pierre Rosenberg, Catalog of the Exposure of 1979 , p. 296)

Let us retain the Table of office , known as also Partie dessert with pie, fruits, pot with oille and oilcan (38 X 46 cm, Paris, Musée of Louvre). Chardin proposes here a horizontal composition in which it multiplies the geometrical colors and forms. With the Museum of Beautiful arts of Carcassonne, a still life is of the same title, same dimensions, with the same objects.

It paints also more sober compositions, registered in an oval figure, with fruits, and where the accent relates to the reflections, complex plays of the light. For example, the apricot Bottle (Oval 57 X 51 cm, Toronto, Art Gallery off Ontario), and the Melon started (Oval 57 X 52 cm, Paris, particular collection.

should be pointed out finally the olive bottle (7I X 98 cm, Paris, Musée of Louvre) whose Diderot said that it was necessary to start by copying it to learn the trade from painter. But best is to leave the word to the philosopher:

“It is that this vase of Porcelaine is porcelain; it is that these olives are really separated from the eye by the water in which they swim, it is that there is only to take these cookies and to eat them, this bitter orange to open it and press it, this wine glass and drinking, these fruits and to peel them, this pie and to put the couteau.
at it It is this one which hears the harmony of the colors and the reflections. O Chardin! It is not white, red, black which you crush on your pallet: it is the substance even objects, it is the air and the light which you take with the point of your brush and which you attach on the toile.
(…) Nothing with this magic is understood. They are thick layers of color applied the ones to the others and of which the effect perspires of lower part in top. Other times, one would say that it is a vapor that one has puffed up on the fabric; elsewhere a light scum that one threw there. Rubens, Berghem, Greuze, Loutherbourg would explain you this to do well better than me; all will make some feel the effect in your eyes. You, all approach are scrambled, are flattened and disappeared; you move away, all is created and reproduit.
(…) Ah! My friend, spit on the curtain of Apelle and on the grapes of Zeuxis. One misleads without sorrow an impatient artist and the animals are bad judges in painting. Didn't we see the birds of the garden of the King breaking the head against worst of the prospects? But it is you, it is me whom Chardin will mislead when he wants. ”
( Living room of 1763 )

In 1765, it is received, following a vote unanimously, with the Academy of Science, Beautiful Letters and Arts of Rouen like free Associé.

In 1769, the Chardin husbands receive an annual life annuity of 2000 pounds free from taxes - increased revenue of 400 pounds the following year.

Marigny had already made him obtain a pension of 200 pounds per annum for its responsibilities in the organization for the Living room for Louvre and the fixing for the tables.

“I obtained from Roy, for you, Sir, 200 pounds per annum in consideration of the care and sorrows that you prené during the Exposure of the tables of Louvre, Regardé this small advantage like a testimony of the desire that I ay to oblige you. ”
(Letter of the May 5th 1763, orth. time)

In 1772 Chardin starts to be seriously sick. He probably suffers from what one called “the disease of the stone”, i.e. of renal colics. Because of the age and disease, the July 30th 1774, it resigns of its load of treasurer of the Academy.

The time of the Pastel S

It is necessary to make a special place with the pastel in the work of Chardin. This art, already practiced by Léonard de Vinci and Hans Holbein takes her rise at the 16th century, in particular with the portraits of the royal family by Maurice Quentin of the Tower (1704 - 1788). Perhaps this is him which gave the taste of this technique to Chardin, his/her friend.

In 1760 Quentin of the Tower had made, with the pastel, a portrait of Jean Siméon (Louvre, Cabinet of the drawings) who had offered it to the Academy at the time of his resignation of the load of Treasurer.

“The Secretary added that M. Chardin seroit flattered if the Academy avoit pleasant to allow him to place in the Academy its portrait painted at the pastel by M. Turn (…). received the gift of its portrait with thanksgiving, and She requested M. le Moyne, old Directing and M. Cochin, Secretary, of going chés M. Chardin, on behalf of the Company, to reiterate its thanks to him”
(Statement of the Meeting of the July 30th 1774, orth. and syntax of the time)

The January 7th 1775, in the presence of Jean Siméon, this portrait will be hung in the room of the meetings.

It is with the beginning of the year 1770 that Chardin is devoted truly to the pastel, which he will explain in particular by health reasons, in a correspondence with the Count d' Angivillier. This last is Directeur and Directing Building industries of the King since 1774. The relations between Chardin and are extremely different for him from those which the painter maintained with the brother Mme de Pompadour. It is even possible to say that Chardin must face a tinted contempt of hostility.

Thus, when in 1778, it expresses at Angivillier its desire to perceive the formerly affected fees with its load of Treasurer of the Academy, it runs up against the scorn of the count.

Chardin is at the same time conscious of the high control to which its art testifies, and of little regard which one grants to the painters Still life :

“If I dared, while finishing, Mister the Count after having spoken about the interests of the Treasurer, to as stipulate those of the painter, I prendrois freedom to observe with the Guard of Arts as this favor rejailliroit into very tems on an artist who enjoy to agree for the truth as in the current of his work, the benefits of his Majesty helped it to support painting with honor, but which unfortunately tested that the long and obstinate studies which nature requires, do not conduisoient it with fortune. If this capricious refused me its favors, It could not discourage me, nor to remove me the approval of work. My infirmities prevented me from continuing to paint with oil, I was rejected on the pastel which made me still collect some flowers, if I dare to refer some to the indulgence of the public. You even, Mister the Count, appeared to grant your vote to me to the précédens Salons, before you were the first director and me encouraged you in this career in which I showed myself more than 40 years. ”
(Letter of the June 28th 1778, faultily dated by Chardin from the June 21st, orth. and syntax of the time)

In its answer of Angivillier points out that Chardin perceived a sum already more important than the other “officers” (those which have an office, i.e. a load, an employment) within the framework of the Academy. But especially it takes up on its account the idea, which did not have almost any more course among true art lovers, that the painting of dead nature asks less studies and of work only the painting of History. Consequently, he considers that it was an error to also largely remunerate Chardin, which should be estimated quite happy that the king allotted a housing to him. With the “great kinds”, broad wages!

“If your works prove the care which deserved you a reputation in a kind, dévés you to feel that one owes same justice with your fellow-members, and devés to you to agree that with equal work your studies never comprised the expenses also expensive ny waste of time as considerable as those of Misters Your fellow-members who followed the great kinds. One can to even know liking them of satisfying, because if their claims are montoient because of their tiredness, administration seroit not able to satisfy them. ”
(Letter of the July 21st 1778, orth. time)

At any time of Angivillier does not suppose that the absence of claims on behalf of the other members of the Academy can be simply due to a recognition of the genius of Chardin of which works transcending the antiquated classification in “kinds”.

To her death, Madam de Pompadour, to some extent, had bequeathed François Boucher (1703 - 1770) to Louis XV who made its First Painter in 1765 of it and Directeur Academy named it. The attacks of a Denis Diderot, that his middle-class morals strikes sometimes esthetic blindness, do nothing there: To stop is a great painter. But to died from the “favorite of favorite”, holding them of the painting of history will break out. Charles Nicolas Cochin the young person (1715 - 1790), large friend of Chardin and formerly protected from Marigny, will be the victim: forced to resign of its place of Secretary of the Academy, it is replaced by J.B.M. Pierre (1714 - 1789), new First Painter of the King.

Supported by Angevillier and Pierre which both scorn Chardin - which returns much more it to them still! - the painting of “great kind” is on the point of launching, with the Néo-classicisme the bouquet of its last fires in the history of Western painting, before making shipwreck in a glorifiant academism of the anecdotes submerged by waves of unimportant details.

It is in this context, and in spite of its enemies, that Chardin will be essential near the amateurs by its pastels, ultimate jewels of his Article To the Living rooms of 1771, 1773, 1775, 1777, 1779 it exposes Autoportrait S, portraits of his wife, heads of old men, heads of children, heads of expression, and a copy of Rembrandt.

Chardin is success with these drawings in which it shows good more control than in its some portraits with oil. “It is a kind to which one had not seen it yet being exerted, and which, in its first attempts, it carries to the more high degree”, writes a critic in the literary Year , in 1771.

Already the experts had noticed that, in his oil-base paints, the artist juxtaposed the Pigment S rather than it did not mix them on the pallet.

Thus, the Abbot Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal (1713 - 1796, in its literary Correspondence , 1750:

“It places its colors one after the other without almost mixing them so that its work resembles a little the mosaic of parts of report/ratio, as the tapestry made with the needle that one does not call square. ”

The pastel makes it possible Chardin to look further into this technique. As for the colors, they are binding on the artist in their relation.

Indeed, the problem is not to know if there are blue or green on such real face, but if it is necessary some in the portrait. A half century before the theories of Eugene Chevreul (1786 - 1899) do not influence the Impressionnistes, it develops in its pastels the art of the optical mixture of the colors, and the hatched key which hangs the light. Over its spectacles, in its Self-portrait of 1771 (Museum of Louvre), the soft one and malicious glance of the “Chardin Catch” invites the amateur, not to scan the heart of the painter, but to return on work even, to observe, study unceasingly the pictorial audacities which confer a life attractive on its face.

“Of the three primitive colors the three binary ones are formed. So to the binary tone you add the primitive tone who is opposed to him, you destroy it, i.e. you produce of it the half-tone necessary. (…) From there, green shades in the red. The head of the two small farmers. That which was yellow had shades violets; that which was blood and reddest, of the green shades. ” Chardin could have written, if he had been theorist, these notes extracted the Carnets of voyage to Morocco of Delacroix (1832)… as he could have as declared to him as “the enemy of any painting is the gray. ”
(Delacroix, Newspaper , year 1852)

Louis XV dies in 1774, but for ten years already, Mrs. de Pompadour had not been any more at her sides to direct her tastes. This same year, of Angivillier, which one saw the little of regard that it had for Chardin, succeeds the brother of favorite, protective of arts and the letters. The painter suffers finally relatively little these changes, and in any event, its detractors do not manage to involve a disaffection of the cultivated public.

Thus, to the Living room of the Louvre of the August 25th 1779, Chardin exposes its last pastels. Mesdames - thus one named the girls of Louis XV - knew and appreciated Chardin: for their residence of Bellevue, it had painted in 1761 two tops of doors, the warlike Musical instruments , and the Musical instruments civil . One of it, Mrs. Victoire, is let try by a portrait of Jacquet (i.e. of young lackey):

“One spoke much about the richness of the last living room. The queen and all the royal family wanted to see it and marked their satisfaction of it. One of the pieces which made the most pleasure with Mrs. Victoire, whose enlightened vote makes the ambition of the best artists, was a small table of Mr. Chardin representing small a Jacquet . It if was struck truth of this figure that as of the following day, this princess sent to the painter, by Mr. the count d' Affry, a gold box, as a testimony of the case which it made of her talents. ”
( Nécrologue of the Famous Men , 1780)

Undoubtedly Mrs. Victoire it wanted to buy the pastel; Chardin offered to him, and the following day it forwarded to him a gold snuffbox.

Monday December 6th 1779, in 9 hours of the morning, Jean Siméon Chardin dies in his apartment of the galleries of Louvre.

By the inventory after death, we know that the Chardin household was at ease. However, Francoise Marguerite Pouget asks for a share of reversion of the revenues of her husband. One cannot, this time, to reproach Angivillier his refusal:

“But though there was, indeed, some examples of widows of artists who obtained pensions after the death of their husbands, I find that it étoient or widows of artists who étoient especially dead with the service of the roy, or some which, of died thereafter of their husband, restoient in a state of distress such as the honor of arts of the Academy exigeoit to some extent which one came to their help. Mr. Chardin had a reputation deserved and in the public and the Academy, but did not have the first advantage, because the nature of its talent, though eminent, it comportoit not. I am assured that the second case is not applicable for you, and your delicacy refuseroit surely a benefit of the king for this reason. ”
(Document of the Public records going back to 1779, orth. time).

Mrs Chardin withdraws herself at a member of her family. She dies the May 15th 1791.

Diffusion of works: Engraving S and poems

Before the 19th century and apart from the exposures and living rooms which, in any case, hardly lasted, little of people could contemplate tables. Engraving, mode of reproduction as much as certainly means of expression for large artists, like Rembrandt, was also a mode of reproduction and diffusion of extreme importance since the end of the 14th century until the invention of photography in 1839 by Daguerre.

The 18th century particularly, the collectors enjoyed to make thus reproduce works of their “galleries”. The tables of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Chardin (paintings of kind) are undoubtedly those which, in this century, gave place to the greatest number of engravings. Pierre-Jean Mariette testifies some in his Abécédario (1749): “The prints which one engraved according to the tables of Mr. Chardin (…) became prints with the mode (…). The large public with pleasure re-examines actions which occur daily under its eyes in its household. ” Often a short legend in worms accompanies the image. Here are some examples:

a woman occupied to seal a letter , engraving by Etienne Fessard (1714 - 1777):

“Hastens, Frontain: see your young Mistress,
Its tender impatience bursts in its eyes;
It delays to him already that the object of its Vœux
Received this Ticket, guarantees its tendresse.
Ah! Frontain, to act with this lenteur
Never God of Love did not thus touch your heart. ”

soap Bottles, engraving by Pierre Filloeul (1696 - after 1754):

“Garçon
Contemplates well These small Soap spheres:
Their movement if variable
And their glare if little durable
Te will make say with reason,
That in that many Iris is rather similar for them. ”

a lady which takes the , engraving Pierre Filloeul:

“That the young person Damis happy seroit, Climène,
If this ebullient liquor,
Pouvoit to overheat your heart,
And if sugar had the virtue souveraine
To soften what in your humeur
This lover finds rigor. ”

the House of cards or the son of Mr. Black having fun to make an house of cards , engraving by Filloeul:

“You make fun wrongly of this adolescent
And of its humble ouvrage
Prest to fall to the first vent
Greybeards in the age even where one must be sage
Often it leaves our serveaux (sic)
Moreover more ridiculous castles. ”

And sometimes, the engraver himself is the author of the epigram. Thus of engraving according to this same table, by François-Bernard Lepiécé (1698 - 1755):

“Pleasant Child whom the pleasure decides, We badinons of your frail work: But between us, which is most solid Our projects or of your castles. ”

Critical fortune

The bond with the role of the prints is quite naturally made as soon as that one knows that the exit of each new engraving according to a table of Chardin is the source of a comment, generally eulogistic, in the Mercure de France . However, it is not in this periodical that it is advisable to draw some criticisms. N.B. The orthography will be modernized.

Make of Saint-Yenne (1688 - 1776), Réflexions on some causes of the State present of Painting in France , 1747:

“I should have spoken about Sieur Chardin in the row about the painters type-setters and originals. One admires in this one the talent to return with a truth which is clean and singularly naive for him, certain moments in the actions of the life by no means interesting, which do not deserve by themselves any attention, and of which some were worthy neither of the choice of the author nor of the beauties that one admires there: they however made him a reputation until in the foreign country. Avid public of its tables, and the author painting only for his recreation and consequently very little, sought with eagerness to compensate for them the prints engraved according to his works. The two portraits with the Living room, large like nature, are the first which I saw in his way. No matter what they are very well, and which they promise still better, if the author made his occupation of it, public would be with despair to see him giving up, and even neglecting an original talent and an inventive brush to deliver itself by kindness to a kind become too vulgar and without the pivot of the need. ”

Anonymity, “historical Praise of Mr. Chardin”, Nécrologue of the famous Men , 1780:

“Its first Master was nature: he had carried while being born the intelligence from theobscure one, and he stuck early to improve this so rare talent, persuaded that it is the color which makes all the charm of the imitation, and which gives to the imitated thing a price that it often does not have in reality. This exactitude undoubtedly prevented it from rising with the kind of the History, which requires more knowledge, a vaster imagination, more effort, of genius, and more details than all the other kinds, or, for better saying, which joins together them all. It was limited to only one, preferring to be the first in a lower kind, than to be confused in the crowd of the poor Painters in a higher kind; also it will be always looked like one of the largest Colourists of the French School. ”

Charles Nicolas Cochin, 1715 - 1790, Test on the life of Mr. Chardin , 1780:

“These tables cost him much time, because it was not satisfied with a nearest imitation of nature, that it wanted there the greatest truth in tons and the effects. This is why it repainted them until it had arrived to this rupture of tons that produces the distance of the object and the references of all those which surround it, and which finally it had obtained this magic agreement which so supérieurement distinguished it. (…) Also, though in general its brush was not very pleasant and to some extent rough, it was well little of tables which could be supported beside his, and one said of him, like M. Restout the father, that it was a dangerous neighbor. Its tables had, moreover, one extremely rare merit: it was the truth and the naivety, either of the attitudes, or of the compositions. Nothing appeared brought to with it purposely neither to group nor to produce effect; and however all these conditions were met with a all the more admirable art as it was more hidden. Independently of the truth and the force of the color, this so natural simplicity charmed everyone. In general, the public is little touched efforts of genius which one makes to find of the effects and turnings that one names picturesque. With the truth, they have a true merit sometimes; but too often they deviate from nature and miss by there the impression which one had proposed that they made. It is the truth and the naturalness which the greatest number seeks mainly: also M. Chardin had it greatest successes in all the exposures. ”

Edmond and Jules of Goncourt, “Chardin”, Gazette of the Art schools , 1864:

“At his place, not of arrangement nor of convention: he does not admit the prejudice of the friendly or enemy colors. He dares, like nature even, the most contrary colors. And that without mixing them, melting them: he poses them at side one of the other, he opposes them in their frankness. But if it does not mix its colors, it binds them, assembles them, corrects them, the caress with a systematic work of reflections, which, while leaving the frankness to its tons posed, seems to wrap each thing of the color and the light of all that borders it. On a painted object of any color, it always puts some tone, some sharp gleam of the surrounding objects. With looking at well, there is red in this water glass, of the red in this blue apron, blue in this white linen. It is from there, these recalls, these continuous echoes, that the harmony of all rises remotely that it paints, not the poor harmony misérablement drawn from the cast iron from tons, but this great harmony of the consonances, which runs only hand of the Masters. ”

Marcel Proust, “Chardin and Rembrandt”, written in 1895 and published in first in Le Figaro Arts person , March 27th, 1954 (ED. The Pleiad, Against Holy-Beuve , 1971, p. 373):

“If I knew this young man, I would not divert it outward journey in Louvre and I would accompany it rather there; but carrying out it in the Lacaze gallery and the gallery of the French painters of the 18th century, or in such other French gallery, I would stop it in front of Chardin. And when it would be dazzled of this opulent painting of what it called the mediocrity, of this tasty painting of a life which it found insipid, of this great art of a nature which it believed petty, I would say to him: You are happy? However what did you see there? that an easy middle-class woman showing with her daughter the faults that it made in its tapestry ( the hard mother ), a woman which carries breads ( the Provider ), an interior of kitchen where an alive cat walks on oysters, while a dead line hangs with the walls, a dresser already with half dismantled with knives which trail on the tablecloth ( Fruits and Animaux ), less still, of the objects of table or kitchen, not only those which are pretty, like the chocolate ones out of those but Dresden china ( varied Ustensiles ), which seems to you more ugly, a glittering lid, pots of any form and any matter ( the Salt box, the Skimmer ), the spectacles which are repugnant to you, fish dead which trail on the table (in the table of the Line ), and the spectacles which nauseate you, of emptied glasses with half and too many full glasses ( Fruits and Animaux ). If all that seems to you now beautiful to see, it is that Chardin found it in vain to paint. And it found it in vain to paint because it found it beautiful to see. ”

Maurice Denis (1870 - 1943), “Cézanne”, the Occident , n° 70, September 1907, p. 131:

“The aspect characteristic of the tables of Cézanne comes from this juxtaposition, of this mosaic of tons separate and slightly molten one in the author “To paint, said it, it is to record its coloured feelings. ” Such were the requirements of its eye that it was necessary for him to resort to this refinement of technique to preserve quality, the savor of its feelings, and to satisfy its need for harmony… The fruits of Cézanne, its unfinished figures are the best example of this work method, renewed can be of Chardin: some square keys indicate of it by soft vicinities of colors the round form; contour comes only at the end, like an accent ragor, a feature with the gasoline, which underlines and isolates the form already made sensitive by the color gradation. ”

Élie Faure (1873 - 1937), History of Art, Modern art , IV, 1921, p. 226-227:

“All splendor is in exclusive pleasure to paint that never, Vermeer of Delft to share, undoubtedly, no one did not have with this degree. The good Chardin painter makes to his task with love, like a good carpenter, a good mason, a good turner, a good workman who ended up liking the matter that he works and the tool which draws it from the uniform trouble and raises with dignity to know its means. There is not more love in the outgoing naked arm of the sleeve indented than in the towel than it holds and the leg which fills it and weighs with the pink and fatty hand. It is with the same attention that it painted the little girl steady to saying the Grace well to have more quickly its soup, the mom which will serve it and has fun to look at it, and the harmonies middle-class which surround them one and the other, the aprons, the dresses of wool, the blue line running on the tablecloth, the soup tureen, the pieces of furniture of varnished oak, the grinding and cherishing shade. It knows that all that agrees, that the life of the objects depends on the moral life of the beings, that the moral life of the beings receives the reflection of the objects. All that is entitled to its tender respect. It is with Watteau, in France, the only religious painter of this century without religion. ”

Andre Malraux (1901 - 1976), voices of silence , Paris, 1951:

“The humility of Chardin implies less one tender with the model that a secret destruction of this one for the benefit of its table. He said that “one makes painting with feelings, not with colors”; but with its feelings it made fishings. The child of the Dessinateur is not more tenderizing that still life in the jug, and the admirable blue of the carpet on which he plays is not very subjected to reality: the Pourvoyeuse is a brilliant Braque, but equipped just enough to mislead the spectator… Chardin is not a minor artist of the 18th century more delicate than its rivals, it is, like Corot, simplifying gently pressing. Its quiet control destroys the still life baroque of the Dutchmen, fact of its contemporaries of the decorators, and nothing can be to him opposite in France, of died of Watteau to the Révolution…”

Rene Demoris, “Still life at Chardin”, Re-examined of esthetics , 1969, 4:

“Frequently, the Dutch still life surprises the objects, in the order where the man, for his use, laid out them. It all in all tends to constitute a scene of kind whose man is temporarily absent (…). Latent still among Dutchmen, the human presence is resolutely expelled at Chardin. (One seizes better why it gets rid so quickly of the dog and the cat, which constitute an anecdotic element and parasite.)
(…) If the characters are well represented in an action, that does not want to say in movement : they are seized in an idle period of this action, which puts them in home position. For the lunch, it is the moment of the Bénédicité ; for the exit of the child, that where controlling it on him a last glance throws. In the same way, the motionless and curved maidservant holds a jug under the fountain. Better still, the boy innkeeper and the maidservant who clean stove or barrel raised the head and look at something which must be out of the table. The moment when the provider is introduced, it is that where, having deposited the bread on the dresser and its bag still with the hand, it seems to take again her breath. Suspension even clearer in the case of the children who build houses of cards and seem to retain gesture and breath not to shake them, or of that which is fascinated by its Toton.
(…) In the mothers or controlling them who look at children, the glance is attentive, but without precise function: one can put all that one wants in the glance of the Controlling Jeune National Gallery or in that of the Mother of the Bénédicité . It seems that, the child ceasing requiring the attention, the adult, fascinating on him a light retreat, looks it for nothing, to look at it - and it is perhaps on this beach of attention without precise goal which the feeling could be defined, in this moment of time wasted, where the being, object of the activity, are looked for itself, out of any practical requirement. This idle period, that nothing lives (because we do not know what the maidservant looks at, and the face of the mother does not express anything), is subjected to time only cutting the activity undertaken: it thus gives the one indefinite duration feeling, showing us characters at the same time committed in an action and detached from it. ”

Famous collectors of the 18th century

The work of Chardin was widely diffused of alive sound near many collectors. The list of the various owners of its tables, very far from being exhaustive, is here present only to give an outline of the very high regard in which Chardin was held by its contemporaries.

Joseph Aved (1702 - 1766), painter and friend of Chardin. This last made its portrait. It had at least 9 tables of Jean Siméon, only of dead natures. It sold 2 of them with the margravine Caroline Louise.

Caroline Louise (1723 - 1783), margravine of Bade. She had 5 tables of Chardin (of which 4 are still with the museum of Karlsruhe).

Catherine II of Russia (1729 - 1796) had 5 tables.

Dominique Alive, baron Denon, known as Alive Denon (1747 - 1825), engraver and director of the Napoleon Museum: 2 tables.

Frederic II of Prussia, (1712 - 1786): 3 tables.

Knight Antoine of Castling (1672 - 1744): 10 tables with the sale after death.

Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein (1696 - 1772), ambassador from Austria to Paris: 10 works, including 3 pastels.

Pierre-Louis Eveillard, Marquis de Livois (1736 - 1790): 10 works (3 are with the Musée of the Art schools of Angers, and 2 in Louvre).

Louis XV (1710 - 1774): 3 tables and 5 tops of door.

Louise Ulrique of Sweden (1720 - 1782), sister of the king of Sweden Adolphe Frederic: at least 10 tables. N.B. The ambassadors of Sweden brought much information on the work methods of Chardin.

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714-1789), painter: a table representing poulard and a coquemard.

Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714 - 1785), sculptor: at least 6 tables.

Jacques-Augustin of Sylvestre (1719 - 1809), engraver: at least 16 tables.

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