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1699-1779 • French • Painter • Rococo
"Messieurs, Messieurs, not quite so fast! Seek out the worst of all the pictures here, and think that two thousand unfortunates have broken their brushes between their teeth, in despair at ever doing anything as bad. ... If you will hear me out, you will perhaps learn to be indulgent." - Chardin
Chardin persisted in painting STILLLIFE compositions because he enjoyed them, despite their low status in the ACADEMIC hierarchy. With some exceptions, a vivid contrast of strawberries and white carnations, for instance, his arrangements are quiet juxtapositions of shapes and subtle plays of color. He also painted a series of meditations on the theme of mothers and children-for example, Morning Toilette (c.1741).These may have to be taken with a grain of moralizing salt regarding female virtue. Consider a contemporary observer's words (linking the political term "Third Estate" to painting for what may be the first time): "Does a woman of the Third Estate ever pass by [the picture] without believing that here is an idea of her character ... her domestic surroundings, her countenance, her frank manners, her daily occupations, her morality, the emotions of her children .... while her Mother adjusts her hair, this little Girl turns to look back at the Mirror . ... In this ... we read awakening vanity." Some historians read into Chardin's servant class an oppressed proletariat prescient of the French Revolution. Whether or not that is true, he did ennoble ordinary people and simple things-pots, pitchers, eggs, meat-and he could hardly be farther from the effete fripperies of BOUCHER or the eroticism of FRAGONARD.Both were his contemporaries; in fact, Chardin was Fragonard's first teacher (Boucher was his second).DIDEROT, a great supporter of Chardin, wrote, "It is the business of art to touch and to move, and to do this by getting close to nature. Welcome back, great magician, with your mute compositions!
How eloquently they speak to the artist! How much they tell him about the representations of Nature, the science of color and harmony! How freely the air flows around these objects!" Chardin was a modest artist whose speech to the jurors of the official SALON of 176 5, quoted from above, ends "Adieu, messieurs; be lenient, messieurs, lenient!"