Jean Siméon Chardin
Basket of Wild Strawberries
oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm
c. 1760
París, Private Collection
Jean Siméon Chardin
La Raie (The Ray)
oil on canvas, 114.5 x 146 cm
c. 1728
París, Louvre
Prado Museum shows the ‘silent’ paintings of Jean Siméon Chardin Prado Museum in Madrid presents a comprehensive survey of the work of Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), master of the still life painting. March 1 – May 29, 2011]]>
Source: Prado Museum / theartwolf.com
“If I had to define his still lifes in a single word, that word would be ‘silence’”, says Pierre Rosenberg, curator of the exhibition and leading expert on Chardin. The exhibition features 57 paintings by this great master of 18th-century French painting, one of the masters of the still life painting of any era; and a source of inspiration for Cézanne, Morandi, and many later masters.
Structured chronologically, the exhibition shows works from the 1720s to the late 1770s. The most important works in the exhibition include the three versions of ‘The young School Teacher’ (National Gallery of London, National Gallery of Washington, and National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin); a large-format composition titled ‘The Attributes of the Arts’, from the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, which had never been loaned to an exhibition; and, over all of them, ‘The Ray’, one of his most important paintings (believed by many critics to be his masterpiece), loaned by the Louvre. An unusual element in this still life is the inclusion of a living animal -the cat- creating a strange dynamism within the triangular composition of the painting.
“The Great Magician” -as Diderot used to call him- enjoyed a great success in his own lifetime, and in our days his works are present in many of the great museums of the world. Strangely, only 3 paintings by the master are exhibited in a Spanish Museum (all in the Thyssen Museum)
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