Chardin - Boy with a top
The Chardin show is great, they bill him as the painter of silence. He is so unassuming. 25% of his life’s work (over 50 paintings) are there; a comprehensive show from first to last. His first painting was of bottles and a glass of water and a silver cup and nearly his last was more or less the same. The development was very gentle, so slow that one might miss it altogether. He develops from a good, very careful craftsman, through seeing, to feeling and finally to an exquisite chamber music of colour; his pyramid of over ripe strawberries you could almost smell, his senses are so alive. It is a life of enjoyment, a meditation made visible.
The wonderfully reassuring thing about him and his public is his lasting success. Completely at odds with his times: Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard were the prevailing taste, yet he enjoyed success. Louis XV bought his pictures so did some of his court, the King gave him a state pension and a studio. He is probably the most influential French painter of them all. Even today the man in the street seemed to be thrilled by him. It could be argued that some French critics, contrary to the general rule, can still respond to subtle visual stimuli, thanks to Chardin’s refined vision. His subject matter is life at its simplest, bourgeois not royal. He is the first French revolutionary and was patronized by the king.
He was clearly an admirer of Vermeer but whereas Vermeer was a painter of light; Chardin loved the objects themselves; he can lay the bloom on a plum, or the fuzz on a peach with one perfectly judged brush stroke, he masters the textures of furs, feathers, pots, oranges, eggs, bottles, stone or wood. He can paint the back of a velvet chair in the middle distance in one flat pink that could not be more velvety. A commissioned portrait of a boy with a top, so unassuming, so touching. Everything he laid eyes on he promotes to quiet glory. This is visual art at it’s richest.
Thank you for that, Nigel.
What struck me was the evidence of his very careful and consistent craftsmanship. He must’ve been extremely disciplined. This is revealed by the copies that Chardin made of his own paintings. The still lives are virtually the same, some subtle emphasis with brush stokes perhaps, but the bigger painting of the boy blowing soap bubbles of which the three versions from New York, Los Angeles and Washington, were shown together, is so beautifully painted each time, leading the viewer to ask which one came first.
And why? The three, are all so obviously from Chardin’s hand – these in no way strike me as copies from another artist. Maybe, he was onto a good thing, and had the clients lining up . . . . what artist doesn’t respond to market pressures today?