Chardin - Painter

Basket of Wild Strawberries, Chardin, 1761

"Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) was one of greatest masters of Still Life in the history of art. The painting style of the establishment in his day was Rococo: a pretentious style crammed with allegorical images from classical mythology swirling with ornate decoration. To Chardin this theatrical approach reduced art to some kind of intellectual conversation piece. It was totally alien to the world that he constructed - a simple world of truth, humility and calm played out in a few square inches on the wall.

The items he portrayed from his own home were selected for their shapes, textures and colours, rather than for any symbolic meaning they may have had. They were simply painted to convey the visual pleasure he experienced in looking at them. As his friend, the critic Diderot put it, “To look at pictures by other artists it seems that I need to borrow a different pair of eyes. To look at those of Chardin, I only have to keep the eyes that nature gave me and make good use of them.”

What Chardin strove for was an overall effect: a unity of tone, colour and form. His still lifes reveal themselves slowly, with his objects gradually emerging from their subtly toned background, summoned as the writer Marcel Proust puts it, “out of the everlasting darkness in which they have been interred.” "

- source:  http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/still_life/chardin/chardin.htm

Link Google Image Search

National Gallery of Art - Quick Takes

Descent from the Cross, Rembrandt Workshop, Oil/Linen, 1650/52, NGA


Adoration of the Magi, Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Tempera/Wood, 1440/1460, NGA


The Kitchen Maid, Chardin, Oil/Linen, 1738, NGA

On Sunday, I went to the National Gallery of Art - West Building. These are some of my observations.

The Rembrandt paintings express such a broad range of thought and feeling - like life. Regardless of subject matter, he seems to consistently explore a portraiture of sorts. During this visit, I thought about the connections between the way he thinks about the head and the way he approaches landscape and narrative. I think his deep understanding of the head infuses his work with unrivaled emotional depth and awareness. I look at his work as often as possible and each time experience something different and new.

This time, the Italians offered me a fresh look at the round format. Aware of linear perspective and yet unencumbered by it, they freely altered scale to better express their ideas. A meaningful composition in the round reveals a more obvious relation between the composition and format and helps deepen my understanding of composition in general.

Looking at the space in the Chardin paintings was a remarkable visual experience. Instead of receding pictorial depth, his space seemed to also press forward - almost bubble towards the viewer. Two paintings - The Kitchen Maid and The Attentive Nurse - defy obvious and predictable pictorial space. In both, especially The Kitchen Maid, the figure seems to be on the verge of falling head first out of the painting. He is a genius at pictorial tension and balance.

What marvelous teachers!

Link National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC