Jean-Siméon Chardin
French, 1699-1779

“Welcome back, great magician, with your mute compositions! How eloquently they speak to the artist! How much they tell him about the representation of nature, the science of color and harmony!”
Denis Diderot, 1765

French painter Jean-Siméon Chardin was renowned in his day for his still life paintings and humble scenes of everyday life—his “mute compositions”—and today is considered one of the greatest western artists of all time. These two gem-like paintings, with their skillfully contrived simplicity of composition and subject, represent Chardin at his best. His extraordinarily rich depictions of routine domestic duties, frozen in time, prompt the contemplation of the beauty of the ordinary and the unremarkable, inviting the eye to linger over his particular mastery of the appearance and textures of things—fabric, ceramic, glass, wood, fur, metal, meat, skin, stone, and liquid.

The paintings are remarkably well-preserved—their canvases have never been relined and are still on their original stretchers. As a result, the surfaces are essentially untouched and maintain their vibrant brushstrokes and stunning color harmonies, providing and extraordinary opportunity to experience 18th-century paintings as they were originally painted.

 

Oil on canvas, about 1733–39
Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 2006.2-3