Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779)
The Return from Market (1739)
Jean-Baptiste Chardin
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Boy Playing with Cards (1740)
Jean-Baptiste Chardin
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Special thanks to the Microsoft Corporation for permission to use following biographical information from Microsoft® Encarta '97.
Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin was a French painter, one of the finest of the 18th century, whose genre and still life subjects documented the life of the Paris bourgeoisie.
Chardin was born in Paris, November 2, 1699, the son of a cabinetmaker. Largely self-taught, he was strongly influenced by 17th-century Low Country masters such as Metsu and de Hooch. Like them, he devoted himself to simple subjects and common themes. His lifelong work in this style contrasted sharply with the heroic historical subjects and lighthearted rococo scenes that constituted the mainstream of art during the mid-18th century.
Chardin was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1728 on the basis of two early still lifes, The Skate and The Buffet (both 1728, Musée du Louvre, Paris). In the 1730s, he began to paint scenes of everyday life in bourgeois Paris, among them Lady Sealing a Letter (1733, former State Museums, Berlin), Scouring Maid (1738, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, Scotland), and The Benediction (1740, Musée du Louvre). Characterized by subdued colors and mellow lighting, these works celebrate the beauty of their commonplace subjects and project an aura of humanity, intimacy, and honest domesticity. Chardin's technical skill gave his paintings an uncannily realistic texture. He rendered forms by means of light by using thick, layered brushstrokes and thin, luminous glazes. Called the grand magician by critics, he achieved a mastery in these areas unequaled by any other 18th-century painter.
Chardin's early support came from aristocratic patrons, including King Louis XV. He later gained a wider popularity when engraved copies of his works were produced. He turned to pastels in later life when his eyesight began to fail. Unappreciated at the time, these pastels are now highly valued. Chardin died in Paris, December 6, 1779.
Jean-Siméon Chardin (16991779)
Lady with a Bird-Organ (1753?)
Oil on canvas (50.8 x 43.2 cm)
It is curious that the artist¹s first royal commission ‹ in 1751 ‹ should also have been his last figural composition. In fact, Chardin would afterward paint nothing but still lifes or an occasional portrait, not even completing the companion picture to the Lady with a Bird-Organ that had been ordered for Louis XV. In the Frick canvas, which may well be a replica Chardin made in 1753 of the original painting delivered to the King two years earlier and now in the Louvre, the artist has depicted a middle-class lady ‹ perhaps his second wife ‹ training a caged canary to sing by playing an eighteenth-century precursor of the phonograph known as a bird-organ. The title of the picture when exhibited at the Salon of 1751 ‹ A Lady Varying Her Amusements ‹ refers to the subject¹s having put aside her embroidery to play with the bird.
As the final example of Chardin¹s depictions of figures in interiors, the Lady with a Bird-Organ contrasts markedly with his earlier images of robust servants whose simple forms dominate their picture space. Different too are the porcelain-like finish of this picture (albeit abraded) and its muted, silvery coloration. One might almost assume that the artist felt obliged to be on his best behavior in presenting his work to his monarch, but these qualities are actually deliberate echoes of seventeenth-century Dutch masters then much in vogue.
The Frick Collection
http://www.frick.org/html/pntg48f.htm
Jean-Siméon Chardin (16991779)
The son of a cabinetmaker, Chardin was born in Paris and never strayed far from the capital. Trained probably under Cazes and Coypel, the young artist was associated first with the Academy of St. Luke in 1724, but four years later he was received into the Royal Academy as a ³painter of animals and fruits.² By his first wife, Marguerite Saintard ‹ who died in 1735, only four years after their marriage ‹ he had a son, Jean-Pierre, who would develop as a painter and die under mysterious circumstances in Venice in 1767; his second marriage, in 1744, was to Françoise-Marguerite Pouget. Chardin¹s work appeared at the Salon for the first time in 1737 and thereafter regularly until the year of his death. The artist participated actively in the affairs of the Academy, occupying for nearly twenty years the post of Treasurer, which entailed the delicate responsibility of deciding how each Salon would be hung. Louis XV honored him with commissions, pensions, and lodgings in the Louvre. Chardin¹s still lifes and domestic scenes were esteemed equally by the general public and by contemporary connoisseurs throughout Europe.
The Frick Collection
http://www.frick.org
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon (1699-1779). French painter, one of the greatest of the 18th century, whose genre and still life subjects documented the life of the Paris bourgeoisie. He favored simple still lifes and unsentimental domestic interiors. His muted tones and ability to evoke textures are seen in Benediction and Return from Market (Louvre) and Blowing Bubbles and Mme Chardin (Metropolitan Museum). His unusual abstract compositions had great influence.
Chardin was born in Paris, November 2, 1699, the son of a cabinetmaker. Largely self-taught, he was strongly influenced by 17th-century Low Country masters such as Metsu and de Hooch. Like them, he devoted himself to simple subjects and common themes. His lifelong work in this style contrasted sharply with the heroic historical subjects and lighthearted rococo scenes that constituted the mainstream of art during the mid-18th century.
Chardin was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1728 on the basis of two early still lifes, The Skate and The Buffet (both 1728, Louvre, Paris). In the 1730s, he began to paint scenes of everyday life in bourgeois Paris, among them Lady Sealing a Letter (1733, former State Museums, Berlin), Scouring Maid (1738, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, Scotland), and The Benediction (1740, Louvre). Characterized by subdued colors and mellow lighting, these works celebrate the beauty of their commonplace subjects and project an aura of humanity, intimacy, and honest domesticity. Chardin's technical skill gave his paintings an uncannily realistic texture. He rendered forms by means of light by using thick, layered brushstrokes and thin, luminous glazes. Called the grand magician by critics, he achieved a mastery in these areas unequaled by any other 18th-century painter. Chardin's early support came from aristocratic patrons, including King Louis XV. He later gained a wider popularity when engraved copies of his works were produced. He turned to pastels in later life when his eyesight began to fail. Unappreciated at the time, these pastels are now highly valued. Chardin died in Paris, December 6, 1779.
From: WebMuseum, Paris
http://www.oir.ucf.edu/wm/paint/auth/chardin/
