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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chardin, by Paul G. Konody
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Chardin
-
-Author: Paul G. Konody
-
-Editor: T. Leman Hare
-
-Release Date: January 20, 2013 [EBook #41886]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARDIN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by sp1nd, Charlie Howard, and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-    MASTERPIECES
-    IN COLOUR
-    EDITED BY
-    T. LEMAN HARE
-
-    CHARDIN
-
-
-
-
-IN THE SAME SERIES
-
-    ARTIST.                    AUTHOR.
-
-    VELAZQUEZ.                 S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    REYNOLDS.                  S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    TURNER.                    C. LEWIS HIND.
-    ROMNEY.                    C. LEWIS HIND.
-    GREUZE.                    ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
-    BOTTICELLI.                HENRY B. BINNS.
-    ROSSETTI.                  LUCIEN PISSARRO.
-    BELLINI.                   GEORGE HAY.
-    FRA ANGELICO.              JAMES MASON.
-    REMBRANDT.                 JOSEF ISRAELS.
-    LEIGHTON.                  A. LYS BALDRY.
-    RAPHAEL.                   PAUL G. KONODY.
-    HOLMAN HUNT.               MARY E. COLERIDGE.
-    TITIAN.                    S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    MILLAIS.                   A. LYS BALDRY.
-    CARLO DOLCI.               GEORGE HAY.
-    GAINSBOROUGH.              MAX ROTHSCHILD.
-    TINTORETTO.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    LUINI.                     JAMES MASON.
-    FRANZ HALS.                EDGCUMBE STALEY.
-    VAN DYCK.                  PERCY M. TURNER.
-    LEONARDO DA VINCI.         M. W. BROCKWELL.
-    RUBENS.                    S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    WHISTLER.                  T. MARTIN WOOD.
-    HOLBEIN.                   S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    BURNE-JONES.               A. LYS BALDRY.
-    VIGEE LE BRUN.             C. HALDANE MACFALL.
-    J. F. MILLET.              PERCY M. TURNER.
-    CHARDIN.                   PAUL G. KONODY.
-
-_In Preparation_
-
-    MEMLINC.                   W. H. JAMES WEALE.
-    ALBERT DUeRER.              HERBERT FURST.
-    FRAGONARD.                 C. HALDANE MACFALL.
-    CONSTABLE.                 C. LEWIS HIND.
-    RAEBURN.                   JAMES L. CAW.
-    BOUCHER.                   C. HALDANE MACFALL.
-    WATTEAU.                   C. LEWIS HIND.
-    MURILLO.                   S. L. BENSUSAN.
-    JOHN S. SARGENT, R.A.      T. MARTIN WOOD.
-
-    AND OTHERS.
-
-
-[Illustration: PLATE I.--STILL-LIFE. (Frontispiece)
-
-(In the Louvre)
-
-This "Still-Life," which is among the fine array of Chardin's pictures
-at the Louvre, affords a striking illustration of the master's supreme
-skill in rendering the surface qualities, textures, plastic properties,
-and mutual colour relations of the most varied objects and substances,
-such as porcelain, metals, linen, foodstuffs, wood, and so forth. The
-composition is somewhat overcrowded, and lacks the sense of order in the
-apparent disorder, that is so typical of Chardin's still-life
-arrangements.]
-
-
-
-
-    CHARDIN
-
-    BY PAUL G. KONODY
-
-    ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
-    REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
-
-    [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.]
-
-    LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
-    NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                                  Page
-      I.                                                             9
-
-     II.                                                            36
-
-    III.                                                            46
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-    Plate
-       I. Still-Life                                       Frontispiece
-              In the Louvre
-
-                                                                   Page
-      II. La Fontaine, or the Woman Drawing Water                    14
-              In the National Gallery, London
-
-     III. L'Enfant au Toton, or the Child with the Top               24
-              In the Louvre
-
-      IV. Le Benedicite, or Grace before Meat                        34
-              In the Hermitage Collection at St. Petersburg
-
-       V. La Gouvernante, or Mother and Son                          40
-              In the Collection of Prince Liechtenstein in Vienna
-
-      VI. La Mere Laborieuse                                         50
-              In the Stockholm Museum
-
-     VII. Le Panneau de Peches, or the Basket of Peaches             60
-              In the Louvre
-
-    VIII. La Pourvoyeuse                                             70
-              In the Louvre
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin occupies a curious position among the
-artists of his time and country. His art which, neglected and despised
-for many decades after his death, is now admitted by those best
-competent to judge to be supreme as regards technical excellence, and,
-within the narrow limits of its subject matter, to possess merits of far
-greater significance than are to be found in the work of any Frenchman,
-save Watteau, from the founding of the school of Fontainebleau to modern
-days, is apt to be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, un-French, out of
-touch, and out of sympathy with the expression of the artistic genius of
-eighteenth-century France. A grave misconception of the true inwardness
-of things! Rather should it be said that Chardin was the one typically
-French painter among a vast crowd of more or less close followers of a
-tradition imported from Italy; the one painter of the actual life of his
-people among the artificial caterers for an artificial and often
-depraved and lascivious taste; a man of the people, of the vast
-multitude formed by a homely, simple bourgeoisie; painting for the
-people the subjects that appealed to the people.
-
-In order to understand the position of Chardin in the art of his country
-it is necessary to bear in mind that the autochthonous painting of
-France, the real expression of French genius, was from its early
-beginnings closely connected with the art of the North, and not with
-that of Italy. The style of the early French miniaturists of the
-Burgundian School, of Fouquet and of Clouet, is the style of the North;
-their art is interwoven with the art of Flanders. When in the time of
-Francois I. the School of Fontainebleau, headed by Primaticcio and
-Rosso, promulgated the gospel that artistic salvation could only be
-found in the emulation of Raphael and the masters of the late Italian
-Renaissance, and of the Bolognese eclectics; when finally degenerated
-painters like Albani were held up as example, official art became
-altogether Italianised and stereotyped; and the climax was reached with
-the foundation of the School of Rome by Louis XIV. But, though
-officially neglected and looked upon with disfavour, the national
-element was not to be altogether crushed by the foreign importation.
-Poussin remained French in spite of Italian training, and held aloof
-from the coterie of Court painters. Jacques Callot carried on the
-national tradition, though as a satirist and etcher of scenes from
-contemporary life, rather than as a painter. And the Netherlands
-continued directly or indirectly to stir up the sluggish stream of
-national French art--directly through Watteau, who, born a Netherlander,
-became the most typically French of all French painters; indirectly,
-half a century earlier, through the brothers Le Nain, who drew their
-subjects and inspiration from the North and their sombre colour from
-Spain; and afterwards through Chardin, whose style was so closely akin
-to that of the Flemings that, when he first submitted some pieces of
-still-life to the members of the Academy, Largilliere himself took them
-to be the work of some excellent unknown Flemish painter.
-
-What are the qualities that raise Chardin's art so high above the showy
-productions of the French painters of his generation, placing him on
-a pedestal by himself, and gaining for him the respect, the admiration,
-the love of all artists and discerning art lovers? Why should this
-painter of still-life and of small unpretentious domestic genre pieces
-be extolled without reservation and ranked among the world's greatest
-masters?
-
-[Illustration: PLATE II.--LA FONTAINE (THE WOMAN DRAWING WATER)
-
-(In the National Gallery, London)
-
-"La Fontaine," or the "Woman Drawing Water," is one of the two examples
-of Chardin's art in the National Gallery. It is the subject of which
-probably most versions are in existence, and figured among the eight
-pictures sent by the master to the Salon of 1737, the first exhibition
-held since 1704, and the first in which Chardin appeared as a painter of
-genre pictures. The original version, which bears the date 1733, is at
-the Stockholm Museum, and other replicas belong to Sir Frederick Cook in
-Richmond, M. Marcille in Paris, Baron Schwiter, and to the Louvre. The
-picture was engraved by Cochin.]
-
-The question finds its simplest solution in the fact that all great and
-lasting art must be based on the study of Nature and of contemporary
-life; that erudition and the imitation of the virtues of painters that
-belong to a dead period never result in permanent appeal, especially if
-they find expression in the repetition of mythological and allegorical
-formulas which belong to the past, and have long ceased to be a living
-language. Chardin's art is living and sincere, with never a trace of
-affectation. In his paintings the most unpromising material, the most
-prosaic objects on a humble kitchen table, the uneventful daily routine
-of lower middle-class life, are rendered interesting by the warming
-flame of human sympathy which moved the master to spend his supreme
-skill upon them; by the human interest with which he knew how to invest
-even inanimate objects. No painter knew like Chardin how to express in
-terms of paint the substance and surface and texture of the most varied
-objects; few have ever equalled him in the faultless precision of his
-colour values; fewer still have carried the study of reflections to so
-fine a point, and observed with such accuracy the most subtle nuances of
-the changes wrought in the colour appearance of one object by the
-proximity of another--but these are qualities that only an artist can
-fully appreciate, and that can only be vaguely felt by the layman. They
-belong to the sphere of technique. The strong appeal of Chardin's
-still-life is due to the manner in which he invests inanimate objects
-with living interest, with a sense of intimacy that enlists our sympathy
-for the humble folk with whose existence these objects are connected,
-and who, by mere accident as it were, just happen to be without the
-frame of the picture. Perhaps they have just left the room, but the
-atmosphere is still filled with their presence.
-
-If ever there was a painter to whom the old saying _celare artem est
-summa ars_ is applicable, surely it was Chardin! A slow, meticulously
-careful worker, who bestowed no end of time and trouble upon every
-canvas, and whom nothing but perfection would satisfy, he never
-attempted to gain applause by a display of cleverness or by technical
-fireworks. The perfection of the result conceals the labour expended
-upon it and the art by means of which it is achieved. And so it is with
-the composition. His still-life arrangements, where everything is
-deliberate selection, have an appearance of accidental grouping as
-though the artist, fascinated by the colour of some viands and utensils
-on a kitchen table, had yielded to an irresistible impulse, and
-forthwith painted the things just as they offered themselves to his
-delighted vision. How different it all is to the conception of
-still-life of his compatriots of the "grand century" and even of his own
-time! It was a sad misconception of the function and range of art that
-made the seventeenth century draw the distinction between "noble" and
-"ignoble" subjects. When they "stooped" to still-life it had to be
-ennobled--that is to say, precious stuffs, elegant furniture, bronzes
-and gold or silver goblets, choice specimens of hot-house flowers, and
-such like material were piled up in what was considered picturesque
-abundance--and the whole thing was as theatrical and tasteless and
-sham-heroic as a portrait by Lebrun, the Court favourite. Even the Dutch
-and Flemish still-life painters of the period, who had a far keener
-appreciation of Nature, catered for the taste that preferred the display
-of riches to simple truth. Their flowers and fruit were carefully chosen
-faultless specimens, accompanied generally by costly objects and stuffs;
-and on the whole these large decorative pieces were painted with
-wonderful accuracy in the rendering of each individual blossom or other
-detail, but with utter disregard of atmosphere. It has been rightly said
-that these Netherlanders gave the same _kind_ of attention to every
-object, whilst Chardin bestowed upon the component parts of his
-still-life compositions not the same kind, but the same _degree_ of
-attention. And above all, whilst suggesting the texture and volume and
-material of each individual object with faultless accuracy, Chardin
-never lost sight of the ensemble--that is to say, the opposition of
-values, the interchange that takes place between the colours of two
-different objects placed in close proximity, the reflections which
-appear not only where they would naturally be expected, as on shiny
-copper or other metals, but even those on comparatively dull surfaces,
-which would probably escape the attention of the untrained eye. Chardin
-looked upon everything with a true painter's vision; and his brush
-expressed not his knowledge of the form of things, but the visual
-impression produced by their ensemble. He did not think in outline, but
-in colour. If proof were needed, it will be found in the extreme
-scarcity of sketches and drawings from his hand. Only very few sketches
-by Chardin are known, and these few proclaim the painter rather than the
-draughtsman.
-
-Still, having pointed out the gulf that divides our master from the
-still-life painters of the _grand siecle_, it is only right to add that
-he did not burst upon the world as an isolated phenomenon, and that
-painters like Desportes and Oudry form the bridge from Monnoyer, the
-best known of the French seventeenth-century compilers of showy
-monumental still-life, to Chardin. Monnoyer belongs to a time that knew
-neither respect nor genuine love for Nature and her laws. He simply
-followed the rules of the grand style, and had no eye for the play of
-reflections and the other problems, which are the delight of the
-moderns--and Chardin is essentially modern. Monnoyer's son Baptiste, and
-his son-in-law Belin de Fontenay did not depart from his artificial
-manner. But with Oudry, in spite of much that is still traditional in
-his art, we arrive already at a new conception of still-life painting.
-In a paper read by this artist to the Academy he relates how, in his
-student days, when asked by Largilliere to paint some flowers, he placed
-a carefully chosen, gaily coloured bouquet in a vase, when his master
-stopped him and said: "I have set you this task to train you for colour.
-Do you think the choice you have made will do for the purpose? Get a
-bunch of flowers all white." Oudry did as he was bid, and was then told
-to observe that the flowers are brown on the shadow side, that on a
-light ground they appear in half tones, and that the whitest of them are
-darker than absolute white. Largilliere then pointed out to him the
-action of reflections, and made him paint by the side of the flowers
-various white objects of different value for comparison. Oudry was not
-a little surprised at discovering that the flowers consisted of an
-accumulation of broken tones, and were given form and relief by the
-magic of shadows. Both Oudry and Desportes did not consider common
-objects unworthy of their attention, and in this way led up to the type
-of work in which Chardin afterwards achieved his triumphs.
-
-[Illustration: PLATE III.--L'ENFANT AU TOTON (THE CHILD WITH THE TOP)
-
-(In the Louvre)
-
-"L'Enfant au Toton" ("The Child with the Top") is the portrait of
-Auguste Gabriel Godefroy, son of the jeweller Godefroy, and is the
-companion picture to the "Young Man with the Violin," which represents
-the child's elder brother Charles. The two pictures were bought in 1907
-for the Louvre, at the high price of 350,000 francs. "L'Enfant au Toton"
-was first exhibited at the Salon of 1738, and was engraved by Lepicie in
-1742. A replica of the picture was in the collection of the late M.
-Groult. It is one of Chardin's most delightful presentments of innocent
-childish amusement, and illustrates at the same time the master's
-supreme skill in the painting of still-life.]
-
-Chardin's still-life pictures never appear to be grouped to form
-balanced arrangements of line and colour. The manner how the objects are
-seen in the accidental position in which they were left by the hands
-that used them holds more than a suggestion of genre painting. Indeed,
-it may be said that all Chardin's still-life partakes of genre as much
-as his genre partakes of still-life. A loaf of bread, a knife, and a
-black bottle on a crumpled piece of paper; a basket, a few eggs, and a
-copper pot, and such like material, suffice for him to create so vivid a
-picture of simple home life, that only the presence of the housewife
-or serving-maid is needed to raise the painting into the sphere of
-domestic genre. Sometimes this scarcely needed touch of actual life is
-given by the introduction of some domestic animal; and in these cases we
-already find a hint of that unity of conception which in Chardin's genre
-pieces links the living creature to the surrounding inanimate objects.
-Take the famous "Skate" at the Louvre. On a table you see an earthen
-pot, a saucepan, a kettle, and a knife, grouped in accidental disorder
-on a negligently spread white napkin on the right; on the left are some
-fish and oysters and leeks, and from the wall behind is suspended a huge
-skate. A cat is carefully feeling its way among the oyster-shells,
-deeply interested in the various victuals which it eyes with eager
-longing. Even more pronounced is this attitude of interest in Baron
-Henri de Rothschild's "Chat aux Aguets." Here a crouching cat, half
-puzzled, half excited, is seen in the extreme left corner, crouching in
-readiness to spring at a dead hare that is lying between a partridge and
-a magnificent silver tureen, and is obviously the object of the feline's
-hesitating attention.
-
-It is this complete absorption of the protagonists of Chardin's
-genre scenes in their occupations or thoughts that fills his work
-with such profound human interest. Chardin is never anecdotal, never
-sentimental--in this respect, as well as in the solidity of his
-technique, and in his scientific search for colour values and
-atmosphere, he is vastly superior to Greuze, whose genre scenes are
-never free from literary flavour and from a certain kind of affectation.
-Nor does Chardin ever fancy himself in the role of the moralist like our
-own Hogarth, with whom he has otherwise so much in common. He looks upon
-his simple fellow-creatures with a sympathetic eye, watching them in the
-pursuit of their daily avocation, the women conscientiously following
-the routine of their housework or tenderly occupied with the education
-of their children, the children themselves intent upon work or
-play--never posing for artistic effect, but wholly oblivious of the
-painter's watching eye. Chardin was by no means the first of his
-country's masters to devote himself to contemporary life. Just as Oudry
-took the first hesitating steps towards the Chardinesque conception of
-still-life, so Jean Raoux busied himself in the closing days of the
-seventeenth century with creating records of scenes taken from the daily
-life of the people, but he never rid himself of the sugary affected
-manner that was the taste of his time. It was left to Chardin to
-introduce into the art of genre painting in France the sense of
-intimacy, the homogeneous vision, the atmosphere of reality which we
-find in such masterpieces as the "Grace before Meat," "The Reading
-Lesson," "The Governess," "The Convalescent's Meal," "The Card Castle,"
-the "Recureuse," the "Pourvoyeuse," and the famous "Child with the Top,"
-which, after having changed hands in 1845, at the time when Chardin was
-held in slight esteem, for less than L25, was recently bought for the
-Louvre, together with the companion portrait of Charles Godefroy, "The
-Young Man with the Violin," for the enormous price of L14,000.
-
-In the case of each of these pictures the first thing that strikes your
-attention is the complete absorption of the personages in their
-occupation. In the picture of the boy building the card castle you can
-literally see him drawing in his breath for fear of upsetting the
-fragile structure which he is erecting. You imagine you can hear the
-sigh of relief with which the "Pourvoyeuse"--the woman returning from
-market--deposits her heavy load of bread on the dresser, whilst the
-sudden release of the weight that had been supported by her left arm
-seems to increase the strain on her right. How admirable is the
-expression of keen attention on the puckered brow of the child who in
-"The Reading Lesson" tries to follow with plump finger the line
-indicated by the school-mistress; or the solicitude of the governess
-who, whilst addressing some final words of advice or admonition to the
-neatly dressed boy about to depart for school, has just for the moment
-ceased brushing his three-cornered hat. There is no need to give further
-instances. In all Chardin's subject pictures he opens a door upon the
-home life of the simple bourgeoisie to which he himself belonged by
-birth and character, and allows you to watch from some safe hiding-place
-the doings of these good folk who are utterly unaware of your presence.
-
-Having devoted his early years to still-life, and his prime to domestic
-genre, Chardin lived long enough to weary his public and critics, and to
-find himself in the position of a fallen favourite. But though his
-eyesight had become affected, and his hands had lost the sureness of
-their touch, so that he had practically to give up oil-painting, he
-entered in his last years upon a short career of glorious achievement
-in an entirely new sphere--he devoted himself to portraiture in pastel,
-and gained once more the enthusiastic applause of the people, even
-though the critics continued to exercise their severe and prejudiced
-judgment, and to blame him for that very verve and violence of technique
-which later received the Goncourt brothers' unstinted praise. "What
-surprising images. What violent and inspired work; what scrumbling and
-modelling; what rapid strokes and scratches!" His pastel portraits of
-himself and of his second wife, and his magnificent head of a jockey
-have the richness and plastic life of oil-paintings, and have indeed
-more boldness and virility than the work even of the most renowned of
-all French pastellists, La Tour. In view of their freshness and vigour,
-it is difficult to realise that they are the work of a suffering
-septuagenarian.
-
-The mention of the hostility shown by Chardin's contemporary critics
-towards the system of juxtaposing touches of different colour in his
-pastels, opens up a very interesting question with regard to the
-master's technique of oil-painting and of the eighteenth-century
-critics' attitude towards it. There is no need to dwell upon the comment
-of a man like Mariette, who discovers in Chardin's paintings the signs
-of too much labour, and deplores the "heavy monotonous touch, the lack
-of ease in the brushwork, and the coldness of his work"--the "coldness"
-of the master who, alone among all the painters of his time and country,
-knew how to fill his canvases with a luscious warm atmosphere, and to
-blend his tones in the mellowest of harmonies! "His colour is not true
-enough," runs another of Mariette's comments.
-
-[Illustration: PLATE IV.--LE BENEDICITE (GRACE BEFORE MEAT)
-
-(In the Louvre)
-
-"Le Benedicite," or "Grace before Meat," is perhaps the most popular and
-best known of all Chardin's domestic genre pieces. It combines the
-highest technical and artistic qualities with a touching simplicity of
-sentiment that must endear it even to those who cannot appreciate its
-artistry. Several replicas of it are known, but the original is probably
-the version in the Hermitage Collection at St. Petersburg. The Louvre
-owns two examples--one from the collection of Louis XV., another from
-the La Caze Collection. This latter version appeared three times in the
-Paris sale-rooms, the last time in 1876, when it realised the sum of
-L20! Another authentic replica is in the Marcille Collection, and yet
-another at Stockholm.]
-
-Let us now listen to Diderot, though in fairness it should be stated
-that the remarks which follow refer to Chardin's later work between 1761
-and 1767. First of all he is set down as "ever a faithful imitator of
-Nature in his own manner, which is rude and abrupt--a nature low,
-common, and domestic." A strange pronouncement on the part of the same
-ill-balanced critic who, four years later, condemned Boucher because "in
-all this numberless family you will not find one employed in a real act
-of life, studying his lesson, reading, writing, stripping hemp." Thus
-Chardin's vice is turned into virtue when it is a question of abusing a
-master who avoided the "low, common, and domestic." In his topical
-criticism on the Salon of 1761 Diderot tells us of Chardin, that it is
-long since he has "finished" anything; that he shirks trouble, and works
-like a man of the world who is endowed with talent and skill. In 1765
-Diderot utters the following curious statement: "Chardin's technique is
-strange. When you are near you cannot distinguish anything; but as you
-step back the objects take form and begin to be real nature." On a later
-occasion he describes Chardin's style as "a harsh method of painting
-with the thumb as much as with the brush; a juxtaposition of touches, a
-confused and sparkling accumulation of pasty and rich colours."
-Diderot is borne out by Bachaumont who at the same period writes:
-"His method is irregular. He places his colours one after the other,
-almost without mixing, so that his work bears a certain resemblance to
-mosaic, or _point carre_ needlework." This description, given by two
-independent contemporaries, almost suggests the technique of the modern
-impressionists and pointillists; and if the present appearance of
-Chardin's paintings scarcely tallies with Diderot's and Bachaumont's
-explanation, it should not be forgotten that a century and a half have
-passed over these erstwhile "rude and violent" mosaics of colour
-touches, and that this stretch of time is quite sufficient to allow the
-colours to re-act upon each other--in a chemical sense, to permeate each
-other, to fuse and blend, and to form a mellow, warm, harmonious surface
-that shows no trace of harsh and abrupt touches. Thus it would appear
-that Chardin discounted the effects of time and worked for posterity.
-In one of his rare happy moments Diderot realised this fact, and took up
-the cudgels for our master. In his critique of the 1767 Salon he
-explains that "Chardin sees his works twelve years hence; and those who
-condemn him are as wrong as those young artists who copy servilely at
-Rome the pictures painted 150 years ago."
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-Chardin's physical appearance, such as we find it in authentic
-portraits, his character, as it is revealed to us by his words and his
-actions, and the whole quiet and comparatively uneventful course of his
-life, are in most absolute harmony with his art. Indeed, Chardin's
-personality might, with a little imagination, be reconstructed from his
-pictures. He was a bourgeois to the finger-tips--a righteous,
-kind-hearted, hard-working man who never knew the consuming fire of a
-great passion, and who was apparently free from the vagaries,
-inconsistencies, and irregularities usually associated with the artistic
-temperament. Though never overburdened with the weight of worldly
-possessions, he was never in real poverty, never felt the pangs of
-hunger. He had as good an education as his father's humble condition
-would permit, and his choice of a career not only met with no
-opposition, but was warmly encouraged. In his profession he rose slowly
-and gradually to high honour, and never experienced serious rebuffs or
-checks. His disposition was not of the kind to kindle enmity or even
-jealousy. His early affection for the girl who was to become his first
-wife was faithful, but not of the kind to prompt him to hasty action--he
-waited until his financial position enabled him to keep a modest home,
-and then he married. He married a second time, nine years after his
-first wife's death, and this time his choice fell upon a widow with a
-small fortune, a practical shrewd woman, who was of no little help to
-him in the management of his affairs. It was not exactly a love match,
-but the two simple people suited each other, were of the same social
-position, and in similar comfortable circumstances, and managed to live
-peacefully and contentedly in modest bourgeois fashion.
-
-How dull, how bald, how negative the smooth course of this life of
-virtue and honest labour seems, contrasted with the eventful, stormy,
-passionate life of a Boucher or a Fragonard who were in the stream of
-fashion, and adopted the manner and licentiousness and vices of their
-courtly patrons. There is never an immodest thought, never a piquant
-suggestion in Chardin's paintings. They reflect his own life; perhaps
-they represent the very surroundings in which he spent his busy days,
-for we find in their sequence the clear indication of growing prosperity
-from a condition which verges on poverty--respectable, not sordid,
-poverty--to comparative luxury; from drudgery in kitchen and courtyard
-to tea in the cosy parlour. There can be but little doubt that many
-a time the master's brush was devoted to the recording of his own home,
-his own family, the even tenor of his life.
-
-[Illustration: PLATE V.--LA GOUVERNANTE (MOTHER AND SON)
-
-(In the collection of Prince Liechtenstein in Vienna)
-
-"La Gouvernante," or "Mother and Son," is one of the most attractive of
-the many Chardin pictures in the collection of Prince Liechtenstein in
-Vienna. Observe the perfectly natural attitude of the woman and the
-child, in which there is not the slightest hint of posing for the
-artist. Like all Chardin's genre pictures, it is, as it were, a glimpse
-of real life. This picture and its companion "La Mere Laborieuse"
-figured at the sale of Chardin's works after his death, when his art
-received such scant appreciation that the pair only realised 30 livres 4
-sous!]
-
-The man's character--and more than that, his _milieu_--are expressed in
-no uncertain fashion in his three auto-portraits, two of which are at
-the Louvre, and one in the Collection of M. Leon Michel-Levy. A good,
-kind-hearted, simple-minded man he appears in these pastel portraits,
-which all date from the last years of his life, a man incapable of
-wickedness or meanness, and endowed with a keen sense of humour that
-lingers about the corners of his mouth. It is a face that immediately
-enlists sympathy by its obvious readiness for sympathy with others. And
-so convincing are these portraits in their straightforward bold
-statement, that they may be accepted as documentary testimony to the
-man's character, even if we had not the evidence of Fragonard's much
-earlier portrait of Chardin, which was until recently in the Rodolphe
-Kann Collection, and is at present in the possession of Messrs. Duveen
-Bros. With the exception of such differences as may be accounted for by
-the differences of age, all these portraits tally to a remarkable
-degree. The features are the same, and the expression is identical--the
-same keen, penetrating eyes, which even in his declining years have lost
-none of their searching intelligence, even though they have to be aided
-by round horn-rimmed spectacles; the same revelation of a lovable
-nature, even though in M. Michel-Levy's version worry and suffering have
-left their traces on the features. He is the embodiment of decent
-middle-class respectability. Decency and a high sense of honour marked
-every act of his life, and decency had to be kept up in external
-appearances. On his very deathbed, when he was tortured by the pangs of
-one of the most terrible of diseases, dropsy having set in upon stone,
-he still insisted upon his daily shave!
-
-Yet Chardin, the bourgeois incarnate, was anything but a Philistine.
-From this he was saved by his life-long devotion to, and his ardent
-enthusiasm for, his art. He was not given to bursts of the theatrical
-eloquence that is so dear to the men of his race; but the scanty records
-we have of his sayings testify to the humble, profound respect in which
-he held the art of painting. "Art is an island of which I have only
-skirted the coast-line," runs the often quoted phrase to which he gave
-utterance at a time when he had attained to his highest achievement. To
-an artist who talked to him about his method of improving the colours,
-he replied in characteristic fashion: "And who has told you, sir, that
-one paints with colours?" "With what then?" questioned his perplexed
-interviewer. "One _uses_ colours, but one paints with feeling."
-
-Brilliant technician as he was, and admirable critic of his own and
-other artists' work, Chardin lacked the gift to communicate his
-knowledge to others. He was a bad teacher--he was a wretched teacher.
-Even such pliable material as Fragonard's genius yielded no results to
-his honest efforts. It was Boucher who, at the height of his vogue and
-overburdened with commissions that did not allow him the time to devote
-himself to the nursing of a raw talent, recommended Fragonard to work in
-Chardin's studio; but six months' teaching by the master failed to bring
-out the pupil's brilliant gifts. Chardin knew not how to impart his
-marvellous technique to young Fragonard, and Fragonard returned to
-Boucher without having appreciably benefited by Chardin's instruction.
-The master had no better luck with his own son, though in this case the
-failure was due rather to lack of talent than to bad teaching, for Van
-Loo and Natoire were equally unsuccessful in their efforts to develop
-the unfortunate young man's feeble gifts. There is a touch of deepest
-pathos in the reference made by Chardin to his son at the close of an
-address to his Academic colleagues in 1765: "Gentlemen, gentlemen, be
-indulgent! He who has not felt the difficulty of art does nothing that
-counts; he who, like my son, has felt it too much, does nothing at all.
-Farewell, gentlemen, and be indulgent, be indulgent!"
-
-Chardin had no artistic progeny to carry on his tradition, partly,
-perhaps, because he failed as a teacher, more probably because the
-Revolution and the Empire were close at hand when he died, and because
-the social upheavals led to new ideals and to an art that was based on
-an altogether different aesthetic code. The star of David rose when
-Chardin's gave its last flickers; and Chardin himself was among the
-commissioners who signed on the 10th of January 1778 the highly
-laudatory report on David's large battle sketch sent to Paris by the
-Director of the School of Rome. Yet who would venture to-day to mention
-the two in the same breath. David has fallen into well-deserved
-oblivion, and the example of Chardin's glorious paintings has done what
-was beyond the master's own power--it has created a School that is daily
-enlisting an increasing number of highly gifted followers. Chardin's
-name is honoured and revered in every modern painter's studio.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin was born in Paris on November 2, 1699, the
-second son of Jean Chardin, cabinetmaker, or to be more strict,
-billiard-table maker, a hard-working man who rose to be syndic of his
-corporation, but who, the father of a family of five, was fortunately
-not sufficiently prosperous to give his son a literary education. I say
-fortunately, because it was probably his ignorance of mythology and
-classic lore that made Chardin, who often bitterly regretted his
-educational deficiencies, turn his attention to those subjects which
-required a keenly observing eye and a sure hand, and not a fertile
-imagination stimulated by book-knowledge. His lack of education saved
-Chardin from allegorical and mythological clap-trap, and made him the
-great painter of the visible world of his time. Though Jean Chardin
-wanted his son to take up his own profession, he was quick in
-recognising and encouraging the boy's early talent, and finally made him
-enter the Atelier of Pierre Jacques Cazes where Simeon received his
-first systematic training. Cazes was a capable enough painter in the
-traditional grand manner of Le Brun, which had been taught to him by Bon
-Boullogne. He had taken the Prix de Rome, and issued victorious from
-several other competitions, but, like Rigaud and Largilliere and several
-other distinguished painters of the period, never availed himself of the
-privilege entailed by the award of the Prix de Rome. Indeed, he was not
-a little proud of this fact, as he showed by his reply to Crozat who
-commiserated with him for having never seen the Italian masterpieces--"I
-have proved that one can do without them." Yet whatever merit there may
-have been in Cazes' work, and whatever may have been his own opinion on
-this subject, prosperity came not his way; and although he was appointed
-Professor at the Academy, and rose to great popularity as a teacher, he
-remained so poor that he could not afford to provide his pupils with
-living models. They had to learn what they could from copying their
-master's compositions and studies.
-
-The copying of designs, based on literary conceptions and knowledge of
-the classics, could not possibly be either beneficial or attractive for
-a youth who lacked the education needed for understanding these
-subjects, and who was, moreover, deeply interested in the life that came
-under his personal observation. The tasks set to him by Cazes must have
-appeared to Chardin like the drudgery of acquiring proficiency in a
-hieroglyphic language that conveyed no definite meaning to him. Still,
-Chardin made such progress under his first master that Noel Nicolas
-Coypel engaged him as assistant to paint the details in some
-decorative over-door panels representing the Seasons and the Pleasures
-of the Chase.
-
-[Illustration: PLATE VI.--LA MERE LABORIEUSE
-
-(In the Stockholm Museum)
-
-"La Mere Laborieuse," which is the companion picture to "La
-Gouvernante," was first exhibited at the Salon of 1745, where it
-attracted the attention of Count Tessin, who immediately commissioned
-the replica which is now at the Stockholm Museum. The picture was
-engraved by Lepicie in the same year in which it was first exhibited.]
-
-In Coypel Chardin found a master of very different calibre--a teacher
-after his own heart. The systematised knowledge of the principles
-adopted by the late Bolognese masters, rules of composition and of the
-distribution of light and shade, were certainly of little use to him
-when, on beginning his work in Coypel's studio, he was set the task of
-painting a gun in the hand of a sportsman. Chardin was amazed at the
-trouble taken by his employer, and at the amount of thought expended by
-him upon the placing and lighting of the object. The painting of this
-gun was Chardin's first valuable lesson. He was made to realise the
-importance of a comparatively insignificant accessory. He was shown how
-its position would affect the rhythm of the design. He was taught to
-paint with minute accuracy whatever his eye beheld. He was told,
-perhaps for the first time, that it was not enough to paint a
-hieroglyphic that will be recognised to represent a gun, but that the
-paint should express the true appearance of the object, its plastic
-form, its surface, the texture of the material, the play of light and
-shade and reflections. The lesson of this gun gave the death blow to
-traditional recipes, and laid the foundation of Chardin's art.
-
-Chardin did well under the new tuition, so well that Jean-Baptiste Van
-Loo engaged him to help in the restoration of some paintings in the
-gallery of Fontainebleau. It must have been a formidable task, since not
-only Chardin, but J. B. Van Loo's younger brother Charles and some
-Academy students were made to join the master's staff. Five francs a day
-and an excellent dinner on the completion of the work were the wages for
-the job which in some way was a memorable event in our master's life.
-With the exception of a visit to Rouen in his old age, the trip to
-Fontainebleau afforded Chardin the only glimpse he ever had of the
-world beyond Paris and the surrounding district.
-
-The first record we have of Chardin's independent activity has reference
-to an astonishing piece of work which has disappeared long since, but is
-known to us from an etching by J. de Goncourt. The work in question was
-a large signboard, 14 feet 3 inches long by 2 feet 3 inches wide,
-commissioned from him by a surgeon who was on terms of friendship with
-Chardin's father. Perhaps the young artist had seen Watteau's famous
-signboard for Gersaint, now in the German Emperor's Collection. However
-this may be, like Watteau he departed from the customary practice of
-filling the board with a design made up of the implements of the
-patron's craft,[1] and painted an animated street scene, representing
-the sequel to a duel. The scene is outside the house of a surgeon who
-is attending to the wound of the defeated combatant, whilst a group of
-idle folk of all conditions, attracted by curiosity, have assembled in
-the street, and are watching the proceedings, and excitedly discussing
-the occurrence. Although Goncourt's etching naturally gives no
-indication of the colour and technique of this remarkable and
-unconventional painting, it enables us to see the very natural and
-skilful grouping and the excellent management of light and shade which
-Chardin had mastered even at that early period.
-
-The sign was put up on a Sunday, and attracted a vast crowd whose
-exclamations induced the surgeon to step outside his house and ascertain
-the cause of the stir. Being a man of little taste, his anger was
-aroused by Chardin's bold departure from convention, but the general
-approval with which the _quartier_ greeted Chardin's original conception
-soon soothed his ruffled spirit, and the incident led to no further
-unpleasantness.
-
-Save for the story of the surgeon's sign, nothing is known of Chardin's
-doings from his days of apprenticeship to his first appearance, in 1728,
-at the _Exposition de la Jeunesse_, a kind of open-air Salon without
-jury, held annually in the Place Dauphine on Corpus Christi day, between
-6 A.M. and midday, "weather permitting." With the exception of the
-annual Salon at the Louvre, which was only open to the works of the
-members of the Academy, this _Exposition de la Jeunesse_ was the only
-opportunity given to artists for submitting their works to the public.
-At the time when Chardin made his debut at this picture fair, the annual
-Academy Salon instituted by Louis XIV. had been abandoned for some
-years, so that even the members of the Academy were driven to the Place
-Dauphine in order to keep in touch with the public. In the contemporary
-criticisms of the _Mercure_ the names of all the greatest French masters
-of the first half of the eighteenth century are to be found among the
-exhibitors of the _Jeunesse_--the shining lights of the profession,
-Coypel, Rigaud, De Troy, among the crowd of youngsters eager to make
-their reputation. Lancret, Oudry, Boucher, Nattier, Lemoine--none of
-them disdained to show their works under conditions which had much more
-in common with those that obtain at an annual fair, than with those we
-are accustomed to associate with a picture exhibition. The spectacle of
-dignified Academicians thus seeking public suffrage in the street
-finally induced Louis de Boullogne, Director of the Academy, to seek for
-an amelioration of the prevailing conditions, and thanks to the
-intervention of the Comptroller-general of the King's Buildings the
-Salon of the Louvre was re-opened in 1725 for a term of four
-days--"outsiders" being excluded as of yore.
-
-On Corpus Christi day, 1728, Chardin, then in his twenty-ninth year,
-availed himself for the first time of the opportunity given to rising
-talent, and made his appearance at the Place Dauphine with a dozen
-still-life paintings, including "The Skate" and "The Buffet"--the two
-masterpieces which are counted to-day among the treasured possessions of
-the Louvre. This sudden revelation of so personal and fully developed a
-talent caused no little stir. Chardin was hailed as a master worthy to
-be placed beside the great Netherlandish still-life painters, and was
-urged by his friends to "present himself" forthwith at the Academy.
-Chardin reluctantly followed the advice, and, having arranged his
-pictures ready for inspection in the first room of the Academy at the
-Louvre, retired to an adjoining apartment, where he awaited, not without
-serious misgivings, the result of his bold venture.
-
-His fears proved to be unfounded. A contemporary of Chardin's has left
-an amusing account of what befell our timid artist. M. de Largilliere
-entered the first room and carefully examined the pictures placed there
-by Chardin. Then he passed into the next room to speak to the
-candidate. "You have here some very fine pictures which are surely the
-work of some good Flemish painter--an excellent school for colour, this
-Flemish school. Now let us see your works." "Sir, you have just seen
-them." "What! these were your pictures?" "Yes, sir." "Then," said
-Largilliere, "present yourself, my friend, present yourself." Cazes,
-Chardin's old master, likewise fell into the innocent trap, and was
-equally complimentary, without suspecting the authorship of the exposed
-pictures. In fact, he undertook to stand as his pupil's sponsor. When
-Louis de Boullogne, Director of the Academy and painter to the king,
-arrived, Chardin informed him that the exhibited pictures were painted
-by him, and that the Academy might dispose of those which were approved
-of. "He is not yet 'confirmed' (_agree_) and he talks already of being
-'received' (_recu_)![2] However," he added, "you have done well to
-mention it." He reported the proposal, which was immediately
-accepted. The ballot resulted in Chardin being at the same time,
-"confirmed" and "received." On Sept. 25, 1728, he was sworn in, and
-became a full member of the Academy. In recognition of his rare genius,
-and in consideration of his impecunious condition, his entrance fee was
-reduced to 100 livres. "The Buffet" and a "Kitchen" piece were accepted
-as "diploma pictures."
-
-[Illustration: PLATE VII.--LE PANNEAU DE PECHES
-
-(In the Louvre)
-
-"Le Panneau de Peches," (The Basket of Peaches) is a magnificent
-instance of Chardin's extraordinary skill in the rendering of textures
-and substances. Note the perfect truth of all the colour-values, the
-play of light and shade and reflections, such as the opening up of the
-shadow thrown by the tumbler owing to the refractive qualities of the
-wine contained in the glass. Note, also, the "accidental" appearance of
-the carefully grouped objects--the manner in which the knife-handle
-projects from the table. The plate is reproduced from the original
-painting at the Louvre in Paris.]
-
-In spite of this sudden success, Chardin was by no means on the road to
-fortune. His pictures sold slowly and at very low prices. He always had
-a very modest opinion of the financial value of his works, and was ever
-ready to part with them at ridiculously low prices, or to offer them as
-presents to his friends. The story goes that on one occasion, when his
-friend Le Bas wished to buy a picture which Chardin was just finishing,
-he offered to exchange it for a pretty waistcoat. When the king's sister
-admired one of his pastel portraits and asked the price, he immediately
-begged her to accept it "as a token of gratitude for her interest in his
-work." Admirably tactful is the form in which Chardin gives practical
-expression to his gratitude for M. de Vandieres' successful efforts at
-procuring him a pension from the king. Through Lepicie, the secretary of
-the Academy, he begs Vandieres to accept the dedication of an engraving
-after his "Lady with a Bird-organ"; and asks permission to state on the
-margin _that the original painting is in the Collection of M. de
-Vandieres_. The request was granted.
-
-Small wonder, then, if in spite of the modesty of his personal
-requirements Chardin, even after his election to the Academy, had to
-wait over two years before he was in a position to marry Marguerite
-Sainctar, whom he had met at a dance some years before, and who during
-the period of waiting had lost her health, her parents, and her modest
-fortune, and had to go to live with her guardian. Chardin's father, who
-had warmly approved of his son's engagement, now objected to the
-marriage, but nothing could deter Simeon from his honourable purpose,
-and the marriage took place at St. Sulpice on February 1, 1731. He took
-his wife to his parents' house at the corner of the Rue Princesse,
-where he had been living before his marriage, and before the end of
-the year he was presented with a son, who was given the name Pierre
-Jean-Baptiste. Two years later a daughter was born--Marguerite Agnes;
-but Chardin's domestic happiness was not destined to last long, for on
-April 14, 1735, he lost both wife and daughter.
-
-His son was, however, his greatest source of grief. Remembering the
-imaginary disadvantages he had suffered from his lack of humanistic
-education, he determined that his boy should be better equipped for the
-artistic profession, and had him thoroughly well instructed in the
-classics. He then had him prepared at one of the Academy ateliers for
-competing for the Prix de Rome. No doubt owing to his father's then
-rather powerful influence, Pierre Chardin gained the coveted prize in
-1754, and after having passed his three years' probation at the recently
-established _Ecole des eleves proteges_, which he had entered with the
-second batch of pupils by whom the first successful "Romans" were
-replaced, he set out for Rome in October 1757. But Pierre, discouraged
-perhaps from his earliest attempts by the perfection of his father's art
-which he could never hope to attain, indolent moreover and intractable,
-made little progress under Natoire, who was then Director of the School
-of Rome. Pierre worked little, quarrelled with his colleagues, and never
-produced either a copy or an original work that was considered good
-enough to be sent to Paris. "He does not know how to handle the brush,
-and what he does looks like a tired and not very pleasing attempt," runs
-Natoire's report to Marigny in 1761. He returned to Paris in 1762, but
-his whole life was a failure. He fully realised his inability ever to
-arrive at artistic achievement. In 1767 he went to Venice with the
-French ambassador, the Marquis de Paulmy, and was never heard of since.
-It was said that he had found his death in the waters of a Venetian
-Canal.
-
-But to return to Simeon Chardin--we find him again among the exhibitors
-of the Place Dauphine in 1732, with some pieces of still-life, two large
-decorative panels of musical trophies, and a wonderfully realistic
-painting in imitation of a bronze bas-relief after a terra-cotta of
-Duquesnoy. These imitation reliefs were then much in vogue for
-over-doors and wall decorations in the houses of the great, as, for
-instance, in the Palace of Compiegne. Two authentic pieces of the kind,
-executed in grisaille, are in the Collection of Dr. Tuffier. The one of
-the 1732 exhibition was bought by Van Loo for 200 livres, and is now in
-the Marcille Collection. According to contemporary criticism the
-bronze-tone of the relief was so perfectly rendered that it produced an
-illusion "which touch alone can destroy."
-
-About this time Chardin's still-life period comes to a close, and we
-find him henceforth devoting the best of his power to the domestic genre
-"a la Teniers" (as it was dubbed by his own patrons and contemporaries),
-though even in later years still-life pieces continue to figure now and
-then among his Salon exhibits. His first triumphs in the new field of
-action were scored in 1734, when his sixteen contributions to the
-_Jeunesse_ exhibition included the "Washerwoman" (now in the Hermitage
-Collection), the "Woman drawing Water" (painted in several versions or
-replicas, of which the best known are at the Stockholm Museum, and in
-the Collections of Sir Frederick Cook at Richmond and of M. Eudoxe
-Marcille in Paris); the "Card Castle" (now in the Collection of Baron
-Henri de Rothschild); and the "Lady sealing a Letter" (in the German
-Emperor's Collection). It is interesting to note that this last named
-picture is the only genre piece by Chardin with life size figures.
-
-Chardin's new departure immediately found favour, and although he
-continued to charge ludicrously inadequate prices for his work, which,
-with the deliberate slowness of his method, prevented him from rising to
-well deserved prosperity, he not only experienced no difficulty in
-disposing of his pictures, but had to duplicate and reduplicate them to
-meet the demand of his patrons, foremost among whom were the Swedish
-Count Tessin and the Austrian Prince Liechtenstein. In view of the many
-versions that exist of most of the master's genre pieces it is often
-difficult or impossible to decide which is the original, and which a
-replica. The artist's modesty with regard to his charges may be gathered
-from the fact that, at the time of his highest vogue, he only asked
-twenty-five louis-d'or a piece for two pictures commissioned by Count
-Tessin, whilst the painter Wille was able to secure a pair for
-thirty-six livres.
-
-Three of the genre pictures of the 1734 exhibition were sent by Chardin
-in the following year to a competitive show held by the Academicians to
-fill the vacancies of professor, adjuncts, and councillors of the
-Academy; but Chardin was among the unsuccessful candidates, the votes
-declaring in favour of Michel and Carle Van Loo, Boucher, Natoire,
-Lancret, and Parrocel.
-
-The regular course of the Academy Salons, which had been interrupted
-since 1704, save for the tentative four days' exhibition at the Louvre
-in 1725, was resumed in 1737, first in alternate years, and then
-annually without break until the present day. At the inaugural
-exhibition Chardin exhibited again the three pieces of the 1732 and 1735
-shows, together with Van Loo's bronze relief, the portrait of his friend
-Aved (known as "Le Souffleur," or "The Chemist"), and several pictures
-of children playing, a class of subject in which the master stands
-unrivalled among the Frenchmen of his time. Fragonard, of course,
-achieved greatness as a painter of children, but to him the child was an
-object for portraiture, whilst Chardin, the student of life, painted the
-_life_, the work and pleasures, of the child, at the same time never
-losing sight of portraiture.
-
-[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--LA POURVOYEUSE
-
-(In the Louvre)
-
-"La Pourvoyeuse," of which picture the first dated version, painted in
-1738, is in the possession of the German Emperor, is one of the most
-masterly of Chardin's earlier pictures of homely incidents of everyday
-life. The attitude of the woman, who has just returned from market and
-is depositing her load of victuals, is admirably true to life; and the
-still-life painting of the black bottles on the ground, the pewter
-plate, the loaf of bread, and so forth, testifies to the master's
-supreme skill. From the glimpse of the courtyard through the open door,
-it can be seen that the setting of the sun is identical with that of
-"The Fountain"--that is to say, that it represents the modest house in
-the Rue Princesse, in which Chardin lived up to the time of his second
-marriage. Another replica is in the collection of Prince Liechtenstein
-in Vienna. Our plate is reproduced from the version in the Louvre.]
-
-His success was decisive. His reputation was now firmly established,
-and still further increased by his next year's exhibit of eight
-pictures--among them the "Boy with the Top," and also the "Lady sealing
-a Letter," which he had already shown at the Jeunesse exhibition in
-1734. Six pictures followed in the next year, including the "Governess,"
-the "Pourvoyeuse" (now in the Louvre), and the "Cup of Tea"; and in 1740
-his popularity reached its zenith with the exhibition of his masterpiece
-"Grace before Meat" (_le Benedicite_), in addition to which he showed
-the two _singeries_--"The Monkey Painter" and "The Monkey Antiquary"
-(now in the Louvre)--even Chardin could not hold out against the bad
-taste which applauded this stupid invention of the Netherlanders--and
-several other domestic genre pieces. A replica of the Benedicite was
-commissioned by Count Tessin for the King of Sweden, and is now at the
-Stockholm Museum.
-
-The bad state of his health seriously interfered with his work during
-the next few years, and his contributions to the Salon of 1741 were
-restricted to "The Morning Toilet" and "M. Lenoir's Son building a Card
-Castle," whilst he was an absentee from the following year's exhibition.
-
-In 1743 Chardin lost his mother, with whom he had been living since his
-wife's death, and who had been looking after his boy's early education.
-Chardin, slow worker as he always was, and overwhelmed with commissions
-for new pictures and replicas, which he continued to paint at starvation
-rates, had no time to devote to the bringing up of his son, which was
-perhaps one of the reasons which induced him to marry, in the year
-following his mother's death, a musketeer's widow, of thirty-seven,
-Francoise Marguerite Pouget, a worthy woman of no particular personal
-charm, to judge from the portrait left by the master's chalks, but an
-excellent housekeeper who managed to bring a certain degree of order
-into her husband's affairs, and proved to be of no little assistance to
-him in his business dealings. It was not exactly a love match, but there
-is no reason for doubting that the two worthy people lived in complete
-harmony and enjoyed a fair amount of comfort. The repeated references to
-his "financial troubles" need not be taken in too literal a sense, since
-from 1744, the year of his marriage, when he transferred his quarters to
-his wife's house in the Rue Princesse, until 1774, when his affairs
-really took a turn for the bad, he enjoyed the ownership of a house
-which he was then able to sell for 18,000 livres, a by no means paltry
-amount for these days. Moreover, in 1752, Lepicie's endeavours resulted
-in the grant of a pension of 500 livres by the king, which, according to
-the petitioner's own words, was sufficient to secure Chardin's comfort.
-True enough, when the artist died in 1779, his widow applied for relief
-on the pretext of being practically left without means of subsistence.
-But an investigation of the case led to the discovery that she was in
-enjoyment of an annual income of from 6000 to 8000 livres! A daughter,
-who was born to the master by his second wife, died soon after having
-seen the light of the world.
-
-The year 1746 was apparently more productive than the five preceding
-years; but henceforth the number of his subject pictures became more and
-more restricted, and Chardin, perhaps discouraged by the public
-grumbling at his lack of original invention, returned to the sphere of
-his early successes--to still-life. Meanwhile his probity and
-uprightness had gained him the highest esteem of his Academic colleagues
-and brought him new honours in his official position. He was appointed
-Treasurer of the Academy in 1755, and soon afterwards succeeded J. A.
-Portail as "hanger" of the Salon exhibition, a difficult office which
-needed a man of Chardin's tact, fairness, and honesty.
-
-When Chardin took up his duties as Treasurer he found the finances of
-the Academy in a deplorable condition. His predecessor J. B. Reydellet,
-who had acted as "huissier and concierge," had neither been able to
-exercise a restraining influence upon the rowdy tendencies of the
-students, nor to keep even a semblance of order in the accounts. On his
-death his legacy to the Academy was a deficit of close on 10,000 livres.
-Chardin, assisted by his business-like wife, did his best to wipe off
-the effects of his predecessor's negligence or incompetence, but the
-task added very considerably to his worries, especially as, owing to
-financial stress, the Academicians' pensions were frequently kept in
-arrear, and for years Royal support was withheld. Matters reached a
-climax in 1772, when the Academy found itself in such straits, that the
-question of dissolving the institution had to be seriously considered.
-Chardin's appeal to Marigny, and through him to the Abbe Terray,
-Comptroller-General of Finances, however, led to the desired result, and
-the much needed support was granted.
-
-The quarters at the Louvre, vacated by the death of the king's engraver
-and goldsmith Marteau in March 1757, were given to Chardin, who let his
-house in the Rue Princesse to Joseph Vernet--another change which must
-have contributed considerably to the ageing master's peace of mind. In
-his wonted slow manner he continued to paint still-life, and received
-several important commissions for the decoration of Royal and other
-residences. Thus, in 1764, his friend Cochin procured for him, through
-Marigny, a commission for some over-doors for the Chateau of Choisy.
-They depicted the attributes of Science, Art, and Music, and were
-exhibited in the Salon of 1765. A similar order for two over-doors in
-the music-room of the Chateau of Bellevue--the instruments of civil and
-of military music--followed in the next year. The payment for the five,
-which was delayed until 1771, amounted to 5000 livres.
-
-Chardin's last years were saddened by the tragic end of his son and by a
-terribly painful illness. His duties as Treasurer became too much for
-him, and he resigned this office to the sculptor Coustou in 1774. There
-was a small deficit which he volunteered to make good, but this offer
-was declined, and a banquet was given to him by his colleagues as an
-expression of their appreciation of his services. The acute suffering
-caused by his illness did not prevent him from continuing his artistic
-work, and we find him at the very end of his career branching out in an
-entirely new direction. The pastel portraits of his closing years betray
-no decline in keenness of vision and in power of expression. Indeed,
-they must be counted among his finest achievements. He worked to the
-very last, and sent some pastel heads to the Salon of 1779. On the 6th
-of December of the same year he breathed his last. His remains were
-buried at St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, in the parish of the Louvre. With him
-died the art of the French eighteenth century. A kind fate had saved him
-from the misfortune that fell to the share of his contemporaries
-Fragonard and Greuze, who outlived him by many years, but who also
-outlived the _ancien regime_ and died in poverty and neglect and misery.
-
-
-    The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., London and Derby
-    The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] A signboard of the conventional type, but painted with all Chardin's
-consummate mastery, is the one executed for the perfume distiller
-Pinaud, which appeared at the Guildhall Exhibition in 1902, and at
-Whitechapel in 1907.
-
-[2] The candidates had to pass through a probationary stage before they
-were definitely received by the Academy.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Simple typographical errors were corrected.
-
-Page 30: "Goncourt brothers'" was printed as "brothers' Goncourt".
-
-Table of Contents added by Transcriber.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chardin, by Paul G. Konody
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