Jean-Siméon Chardin: The Complete Story
Jean-Simeon Chardin entered the French Academy at its lowest rank, painter of animals and fruit, and never left Paris in 80 years. Diderot called what he did magic. A dead ray fish made him famous, and a pastel self-portrait in an eyeshade closed his career.
While his rivals painted gods, Chardin painted a copper pot until it became one. Here is the quietest great career of the eighteenth century.
Jean-Siméon Chardin at a glance:
1699: born in Paris on the rue de Seine, son of a master carpenter who made billiard tables.
1728: admitted to the Academy the same day he applied, on the strength of The Ray, at its lowest rank.
1740: presented to Louis XV with two genre scenes; the king keeps them both.
1755: elected treasurer of the Academy and given the job of hanging the Salon, the century's quietest power.
1779: dies in his Louvre lodgings at 80, having switched to pastel when the oils began wounding his eyes.
A carpenter's son and a dead fish
Chardin was born in Paris on November 2, 1699, son of a cabinetmaker who built billiard tables.
In 1728 the Academy received him on the strength of The Ray, a gutted fish hanging above oysters and a startled cat, admitting him in the lowest category, painter of animals and fruit.
The picture, now in the Louvre, still stops painters cold: Matisse copied it, and Proust wrote about it.
Kitchens, children, copper
Through the 1730s he moved from larders to people: a boy building a house of cards, a governess, a child saying grace.
Saying Grace was presented to Louis XV in 1740, and by 1757 the king had granted him a pension and lodgings in the Louvre itself.
For about twenty years Chardin also hung the Salon exhibitions, deciding where every painting in Paris went on the wall.
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Diderot's magician
Diderot, the sharpest critic of the age, returned to Chardin constantly, writing that one stops in front of a Chardin as if by instinct, and calling his technique sorcery: up close, a fog of scumbled paint; at distance, a plum with bloom on it.
Chardin himself said little. One remark survives from the Academy debates: paint is used with the brush, but pictures are made with feeling.
The myth of the humble painter
Chardin's modesty of subject gets mistaken for modesty of ambition.
In fact he was a royal pensioner living in the Louvre, the Salon's hanger for two decades, and the painter every collector from Catherine the Great down tried to buy.
He simply bet that a water glass, honestly seen, outlasts an Olympus, and the next two centuries, from Cezanne to Morandi, proved him right.
The pastel endgame, and where to see him
When lead white began ruining his eyes in the 1770s, Chardin switched to pastel and produced the self-portraits in eyeshade and spectacles, at the Louvre, that feel a century early.
He died in his Louvre lodgings on December 6, 1779. The Louvre holds The Ray and the pastels, with major rooms at the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
The slowest brush in Paris
Chardin painted at a pace that alarmed clients: a handful of pictures a year, each surface built from layered scumbles no one could reverse-engineer.
Colleagues joked that he mixed with his thumb; Diderot decided the technique was vapor, laid on like breath.
He repeated his own compositions on demand, sometimes years apart, and the repetitions are never copies: the light has moved.
The Salon hanger
As tapissier of the Salon he decided, for two decades, where every painting in France's biggest exhibition would hang.
Rivals grumbled and courted him in the same letter: height, corner and neighbor could make or sink a career.
The still-life painter at the Academy's bottom rank quietly held its most political job, and kept it because no one doubted his eye or his fairness.
A son lost to the sea
His son Pierre-Jean, trained as a history painter, won the Prix de Rome and carried the family hopes to Italy.
The journey broke him: captured by pirates en route, ransomed, unstable afterward, he drowned in Venice in 1767, most likely by his own hand.
The father painted on, kitchens and copper and children's games, the calmest pictures in Europe made by a man whose house was not calm.
The Jean-Siméon Chardin questions that keep coming up
What did Chardin paint? Still lifes of kitchenware, game, and fruit, then quiet domestic scenes of servants and children, and finally pastel portraits when his eyes failed.
Why is Chardin important? He proved everyday objects could carry the full weight of great painting, a lesson Cezanne, Matisse, and Morandi all built on.
Where are Chardin's paintings? The Louvre above all, including The Ray and the late pastels, plus the National Gallery in London, Washington, and Stockholm.
Did Chardin ever leave Paris? Essentially never in 80 years. He was born, worked, lodged in the Louvre, and died within the same few square miles.
How much does a Chardin cost? Museum walls hold nearly everything. When a still life surfaced at auction in 2022, bidding passed 24 million euros; sightings are once-a-decade events.
Why pastel at the end? Lead white and oil fumes were ruining his eyes, so in his seventies he switched medium and made the self-portraits in the Louvre, visor, spectacles and all.
More secrets to unlock
The resident magician of the Louvre
The Academy that admitted Chardin at its bottom rank in 1728 ended up housing him in the Louvre for the last 22 years of his life. The building took him in as a servant of the least genre and kept him as its resident magician.
