Jean Siméon Chardin

Lore & Background

Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre Palace. He served apprenticeships with history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicolas Coypel, and in 1724 became a master in the Académie de Saint-Luc. According to one nineteenth-century writer, he first found notice by displaying a painting at the 'small Corpus Christi' on the Place Dauphine; Van Loo, passing by in 1720, bought it and later assisted the young painter. Upon presentation of The Ray and The Buffet in 1728, he was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. He made a modest living by producing paintings at whatever price customers chose to pay him and by restoring frescoes at Fontainebleau in 1731.

Chardin entered into a marriage contract with Marguerite Saintard in 1723, marrying her in 1731. Their son Jean-Pierre was baptized in November 1731, and a daughter Marguerite-Agnès was baptized in 1733. His wife died in 1735, and within two years his daughter also died. In 1744 he entered a second marriage to Françoise-Marguerite Pouget, which improved his finances. A daughter from this union, Angélique-Françoise, was born in 1745 and died in 1746. Beginning in 1737, Chardin exhibited regularly at the Salon and served the Académie as counsellor, treasurer, and secretary. In 1752 he was granted a pension of 500 livres by Louis XV. By 1770 he was 'Premier peintre du roi' with a pension of 1,400 livres. In the 1770s his eyesight weakened and he took to painting in pastels. His son, also a painter, drowned in Venice in 1772, a probable suicide. Chardin's last known oil painting was dated 1776; he died in Paris on December 6, 1779, at age 80.

Reader's Guide

Chardin worked slowly, painting only slightly more than 200 pictures in total. His work had little in common with Rococo painting; at a time when history painting was supreme, his subjects were viewed as minor categories. He favored simple yet beautifully textured still lifes and sensitively handled domestic interiors. Scholars have interpreted his domestic genre paintings as embodying Enlightenment values through emphasis on modesty, industriousness, and moral virtue. Largely self-taught, he was influenced by the realism of 17th-century Low Country masters. Early support came from patrons in the French aristocracy, including Louis XV. His popularity initially rested on paintings of animals and fruit, but by the 1730s he introduced kitchen utensils and figures into his work. Scenes of children playing, such as building a house of cards, derived from Netherlandish vanitas works but also displayed delight in childhood. Chardin frequently painted replicas of his compositions, especially genre paintings, which exist in multiple nearly indistinguishable versions. His influence on modern art was wide-ranging: Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Chaïm Soutine, Georges Braque, Giorgio Morandi, and Lucian Freud all looked to his work. Marcel Proust, in In Search of Lost Time, described Chardin's ability to reveal beauty in everyday activities.

Did You Know?

• Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city.
• He was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1728 upon presenting The Ray and The Buffet.
• In the 1770s, his eyesight weakened and he took to painting in pastels, including self-portraits.
• His son, also a painter, drowned in Venice in 1772, a probable suicide.