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The Serinette, or The Bird Organ, 1751.
Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779).
Oil on canvas.
The Frick Collection, New York.
Partridge, Bowl of Plums, and Basket of Pears, ca. 1728.
Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779).
Oil on canvas.
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
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More about This Exhibition
In celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the 18th-century French artist Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a major loan exhibition of sixty-six works that survey the artist's distinguished career as a still life and genre painter. On view from June 27, 2000 through September 3, 2000, "Chardin" was the first exhibition in New York devoted to the artist and the first in the United States in more than twenty years.
In contrast to the rococo extravagance of the paintings of his contemporaries, Chardin achieved extraordinary success as a painter of still lifes and interior scenes—then regarded as the least important of artistic genres. His work is characterized by quiet simplicity and pictorial harmony. The critic Denis Diderot wrote in 1763 that a still life by Chardin "is nature itself; the objects free themselves from the canvas and are deceptively true to life." Chardin has continued to be greatly admired, inspiring many 19th-century artists, including Manet and Cézanne.
Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented on the exhibition: "During his lifetime, Chardin was recognized as one of the great painters of his day and, rightfully, appreciation for his work has never waned. The Metropolitan is delighted to present the paintings of this exceptional artist to our visitors, who may not be aware of the magnitude of his accomplishments. Through Chardin's eyes, seemingly banal objects and scenes—a copper pot, a washerwoman, a mother admonishing a child, a basket of wild strawberries—are infused with an uncommon degree of emotional intensity in compositions of exquisite balance and beauty. Rejecting the styles and subjects of his contemporaries, such as Boucher and Fragonard, Chardin elevated the still life to a noble art form and achieved a place for himself as a quiet revolutionary in the pantheon of art history."
The exhibition was made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, the Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
An indemnity was granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
More about the Artist
More about the Objects on View
Educational Programs
Exhibition Publication
Exhibition Organizers and Credits
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More about the Artist
Jean-Siméon Chardin, the son of an artisan, was born in Paris in 1699 and died there shortly after his eightieth birthday. Until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters at the Louvre, he lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice, within walking distance of the Seine. He rarely left his native city, never going farther afield than the royal châteaux of
Versailles and Fontainebleau. Chardin's first wife, Marguerite Saintard, died young; he was survived by his second wife, Marie-Françoise Pouget. His two daughters died in early childhood, while his only son, Jean-Pierre, who had been destined for a career as a history painter, seems to have taken his own life at the age of forty-one.
In 1728, upon presentation of The Ray and The Buffet (Musée du Louvre, Paris), Chardin was admitted to membership in the prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. A dedicated academician, he regularly attended meetings for fifty years and served successively as counsellor, treasurer, and secretary. In 1761 he took charge of the installation of the biennial Salon exhibitions, where he had participated regularly since 1737. He was presented to Louis XV in 1740 and gave him two genre paintings, The Diligent Mother and Saying Grace. The king granted him a pension of five hundred livres in 1752. The 18th-century Académie sanctioned a declamatory style of public art in which history painting, encapsulating the noblest human ideals and aspirations, ranked supreme. The lesser categories were portraiture, genre painting, and still life. While he had served apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes (1676–1754) and Noël-Nicolas Coypel (1690–1734), Chardin was accepted by the Académie in 1728 for his proficiency in the least of these categories—for his paintings of animals and fruit.
Chardin was secretive about his methods. No one saw him painting; he had no pupils or followers. He seems to have worked slowly, in a style that is evocative rather than literally descriptive. He made few, if any, preparatory drawings. His contemporaries observed that his still lifes—which at close range read as a flurry of strokes—have a startling immediacy
and naturalism. He captured household and family routines and children at play in genre scenes that are poignantly true to life. These were engraved and claimed the imagination of a wide public. Small in scale and modest in subject matter, Chardin's paintings are incomparably vivid. His work has long been admired by artists and critics alike.
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More about the Objects on View
The exhibition surveyed all aspects of Chardin's career and included many of the artist's best known pictures, such as his early Académie piece, The Ray (1725–26, Musée du Louvre, Paris), which depicts with startling immediacy a gutted ray fish preyed upon by a bristling cat. Among early still lifes of exceptional quality are Partridge, Bowl of Plums and Basket of Pears (ca. 1728, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe), and Hare with Game Bag and Powder Flask (ca. 1730, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Shortly thereafter, Chardin turned his attention to kitchen utensils and other household objects, often working on a much smaller scale, as in The Copper Cistern (ca. 1735, Musée du Louvre, Paris).
In the 1730s, he painted half-lengths, usually representing children, and explored genre subjects that portray 18th-century bourgeois life. In these paintings, Chardin ennobles domestic tasks—capturing the quiet meditation of a kitchen maid, the simple act of making a cup of tea, or the innocent play of a child. The industrious subject of The Washerwoman (1733, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) conveys moral propriety while the depiction of a soap bubble alludes to the transience of human life. Among the genre paintings, additional highlights of the exhibition were the Metropolitan's own celebrated canvas, Soap Bubbles, (ca. 1734), Girl with a Shuttlecock (1737, private collection), and The Governess (1739, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). These pictures are remarkable for the studied harmony of their pictorial structure.
The exhibition closed with a selection of late still lifes in which Chardin finds balance in the seemingly haphazard arrangement of objects. Vase of Flowers (ca. 1755, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761, private collection) and Three Apples, Two Chestnuts, Bowl and Silver Goblet (ca. 1768, Musée du Louvre, Paris) are works of consummate simplicity. Chardin captures the bloom of flowers and the ripeness of fruit, reflections on a silver surface, and the refraction of light through water.
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Educational Programs
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum offered a variety of educational programs.
A special audio tour, part of the Metropolitan's new Key to the Met Audio Guide, is available for rental at the entrance to the exhibition.
The Key to the Met Audio Guide program was sponsored by Bloomberg News. BACK TO TOP
Exhibition Publication
"Chardin" was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue co-published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, with essays by Pierre Rosenberg and other noted scholars of 18th-century French painting. Catalogue entries for the paintings were written by Mr. Rosenberg and the publication also includes a chronology and bibliography on the artist. The catalogue is available in the Museum Shop in both hardcover and paperback. The hardcover edition is distributed by Yale University Press.
Prior to the Metropolitan's presentation, "Chardin" was on view at the Grand Palais, Paris, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
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Exhibition Organizers and Credits
The works in the exhibition were selected by Pierre Rosenberg, a preeminent Chardin scholar and director of the Musée du Louvre. At the Metropolitan, the exhibition was coordinated by Katharine Baetjer, curator, Department of European Paintings. Exhibition design was by Michael Langley, exhibition designer, with graphics by Jill Hammarberg, graphic designer, and lighting by Zack Zanolli, lighting designer, all of the Museum's Design Department.
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