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This March, the Museo del Prado will be presenting the exhibition
Chardin, a comprehensive survey of the work of Jean Siméon Chardin
(1699-1779). Chardin is one of the leading names in 18th-century
French painting but has never been the subject of an exhibition in
Spain, which only houses three of his paintings, all in the Museo
Thyssen. After being shown at the Palazzo dei Diamante in Ferrara,
the exhibition will be presented in Madrid thanks to the sponsorship
of Fundación AXA. It comprises 57 paintings by this great master of
the still life and of genre painting, including some works not shown
in the version of the exhibition seen in Italy.
Since the exhibitions on Chardin organized
in conjunction with the bicentenary of his death and the
tercentenary of his birth, in 1979 and 1999 respectively, there have
been no further revisions of the relatively small oeuvre (around
200 works) of this admired and highly original artist. Featuring 57
paintings, the present exhibition offers a rare opportunity to
appreciate Chardin’s work and is the first on the artist to be held
in Spain.
The exhibition is structured chronologically, covering the most
important phases of the artist’s career from his beginnings in the
second decade of the 18th century to his late pastels of the 1770s.
Visitors will encounter some of Chardin’s most celebrated paintings,
shown alongside other, little known canvases loaned from private
collections, and some recently identified compositions. In addition,
the version to be shown in the Prado includes 16 works not exhibited
in Italy. They include The Ray, one of Chardin’s most important
paintings, loaned from the Musée du Louvre; The Attributes of the
Arts, from the Musée Ruiz de Alarcón, Madrid. España Jacquemart-André
in Paris, which is a large-format composition on an allegorical
theme that has never previously been loaned to an exhibition; and
the three versions of The young School Teacher (National Gallery,
London, National Gallery of Art, Washington, and National Gallery of
Ireland, Dublin), now shown together for the first time in Madrid.
The exhibition opens with still lifes from the second half of the
1720s, including the celebrated painting the Ray, on loan from the
Louvre. It was Chardin’s entry piece into the Royal Academy of
Painting and Sculpture in Paris but the artist was only admitted in
the lesser category of “Painter of animals and fruit”. At this point
he broadened his areas of interest and introduced the motif of live
animals in his paintings, as can be seen in the two canvases from
the Museo Thyssen on display in this section: Cat with a Piece of
Salmon and Cat with a Rayfish.
The next section opens with still lifes from the 1730s, including a
green-necked Duck hanging on the Wall and a bitter Orange, and Still
Life with a Porcelain Vessel and two Herrings suspended by pieces of
Straw from a Nail in front of a Niche. Shown next, and also from
this decade, are three examples from the celebrated Soap Bubbles
series. Chardin worked in a variety of genres, never completely
abandoning one in order to take up another and was continually
inventive within all of them. He would also frequently return to
earlier themes and simultaneously work on different paintings at the
same time. In the 1730s, and influenced by 17th-century Dutch
painting, the artist turned his attention to genre scenes. Chardin
masterfully conveyed the meditative mood of his figures and the
serene dignity of simple domestic tasks, while his stylistic
evolution is clearly evident in these works. His brushstroke becomes
more vaporous and the soft tonality heralds the pastels of his final
years. In addition, he abandoned his use of models from the humbler
social classes to focus on the bourgeois circle of his second wife.
It was works such as The young School Teacher, seen here in three
versions that have been brought together for the first time, Boy
with a Top, and Girl with a Shuttlecock, that would bring Chardin
true popularity in the second half of the 19th century.
The
exhibition then turns to works from the 1750s and 1760s and to the
artist’s return to the still life, a genre that he had almost
completely abandoned. These compositions are clearly different to
the works of the 1720s due to the presence of a greater variety and
number of types of game, species of fruit and objects (costly pieces
of porcelain and sophisticated glass ware). Among works from this
period in the exhibition are the delightful Basket of wild
Strawberries, Glass of Water and Coffee Pot, and bouquet of
Carnations, Tuberoses and Sweet Peas in a white porcelain Vase with
a blue Pattern, the latter a masterpiece loaned by the National
Gallery of Scotland. Works such of this type reveal a more agile,
smoother type of brushstroke and also demonstrate the artist’s
interest in painting reflections, transparent effects, light and
shadow.
The exhibition ends with two pastel portraits, the medium to which
Chardin turned after he was obliged to abandon oil painting due to
failing health and which provoked great surprise at the 1771 Salon.
These pastels reveal Chardin’s confidence in his own powers and mark
the end of his artistic career. The generous collaboration of a
remarkable number of leading American and European institutions -
particularly the Musée du Louvre, which has lent 11 works – as well
as that of private collectors has made it possible to realize the
challenging aim of bringing together some of Chardin’s most
celebrated paintings for the present exhibition.
A unique painter
“I make use of colours but I paint with sentiment”, Chardin himself
said of his way of painting. The result was works that are very
different to those of the other French painters of the 18th century
such as Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard or David. The artist described
how he focused on the objects in his still lifes: “I have to forget
everything that I have seen and even the way that others have
depicted these motifs.”
In the words of the exhibition’s curator, Pierre Rosenberg, Honorary
Director of the Louvre and the leading expert on Chardin: “If I had
to define his still lifes in a single word, that word would be
‘silence’”. And indeed it is this palpable silence in Chardin’s
still lifes that differentiate them from the work of most of the
other leading painters in that genre, which had traditionally been
considered a minor one and whose recognition in the 18th century
favoured the development of Chardin’s highly distinctive style.
Chardin enjoyed success in his own lifetime, while later artists
such as Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Morandi and Lucien Freud
considered him their master.
The accompanying Catalogue
The
scholarly catalogue of the exhibition, edited by Pierre Rosenberg,
the exhibition’s curator, will include a short introduction, a
principal essay on Chardin, short introductions to the different
chapters and entries on all the works, written by Pierre Rosenberg.
It also includes an essay by the renowned art historian Renaud
Temperini on 18th-century French paintings, and another by Ángel
González, art historian and professor at the Universidad Complutense
in Madrid, on Chardin and his critics.
Published in Spanish, the catalogue will also include an anthology
of texts on Chardin, a chronology of his life and a bibliography of
the specialist literature.
Jean-Siméon Chardin
Chardin was born and died in Paris, spending all his life there and
rarely leaving the city. Of humble social origins, he initially
trained as a craftsman, a fact that influenced his painting and is
evident in the combination of minute detail and freedom that
characterizes his works. Chardin painted slowly, in quest of
perfection, and his output was relatively small as a result. He
trained with the history painter Pierre-Jacques Cazes and with Nöel-Nicolas
Coypel. In 1728 the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
acknowledged his talents and accepted him on the basis of The Ray
and The Sideboard in the lesser category of painter “in the skill of
animals and fruit”.
Some years later Chardin started to produce “genre paintings”. These
small-format works depicting scenes of everyday life made use of a
bourgeois, moralistic viewpoint to offer a sociological study of the
figures. Notable within this category are two works in the
exhibition: The Blessing and The diligent Mother, both of which
brought the artist enormous famous, partly through their
reproduction in the form of prints by Charles- Nicholas Cochin the
Elder (1688-1754) that circulated throughout Europe. Other examples
of this type are the three versions of Soap Bubbles, loaned to the
exhibition from US institutions.
Chardin never abandoned one genre in order to take up another, but
from the 1750s onwards he produced fewer genre scenes and turned
back to the still lifes of his early career. Examples of these later
still lifes include Basket of wild Strawberries, Glass of Water and
Coffee Pot, and Bouquet of Carnations, Tuberoses and Sweet Peas in a
white Porcelain Vase with a blue Pattern, all to be seen in the
exhibition.
Chardin’s final works are pastel portraits, of which two from a
private collection are included in the exhibition.
Chardin’s clients
were Parisian aristocrats, connoisseurs and friends who were
artists. In addition, his great princely and royal patrons included
Louis XV of France, Catherine II of Russia and Louisa Ulrika of
Prussia, Queen of Sweden.
You may use this link to visit the Museo del Prado online for
further information
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