Chardin - Hardcover

Pierre Rosenberg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300083483 ISBN 13: 9780300083484

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Widely acknowledged in his time as a premier painter of still life and genre scenes, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) created unsentimentalized works that appeal to viewers today for their richness of feeling and simplicity of composition. This sumptuously illustrated book reproduces in full color 99 of Chardin’s works and arranges them around five themes: Chardin’s Beginnings and His First Still Lifes, Utensils and Household Objects, Genre Scenes, Chardin’s Return to Still Life, and Pastels.

The contributors to the volume explore Chardin’s work from many different angles, including the latest thinking on such lesser-known facets of his life and work as his use of ceramics and glass, his financial and property affairs, and the complex history of engravings of his paintings. Each of the five sections of the book has an introduction and a selection of Chardin’s paintings accompanied on facing pages by complete provenance, exhibition, and bibliographic information. The book also offers an extensive Chardin biography, an index of names and places, and an index of works.

About this title

Review:

Pierre Rosenberg, the Chardin scholar and President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, had one overriding goal in mind when assembling the exhibition of which Chardin is the catalog: "to present the artist's finest paintings, the most perfect, the most harmonious, the paintings that leave nothing to be desired." The 99 paintings reproduced in this book are a testimony to the success of that endeavor. There are also six essays by Chardin experts and an extensively researched chronology.

Chardin's still lifes and genre scenes have been deeply appreciated for centuries for what Rosenberg calls "the grave, silent quality that encourages the onlooker to silent reverie." He is incapable of untruth: his subjects--jugs and bowls, glasses, cherries, housemaids, boys at play, dogs and cats--are painted without a touch of irony, embellishment, or drama.

It is painful to report that this volume is extremely disappointing visually, with plates that are either poorly reproduced or reproduced from poor transparencies and are slightly greenish or washed out. Except for details, which do show Chardin's close harmonies and painterly touch, the pictures look flat and dull. Art historians, of course, will see the paintings in the flesh and use this book as only an aide-memoire, but for ordinary, nonprofessional art lovers, the 20-year-old catalog of the great 1979 Chardin exhibition gives a far better sense of the quiet perfection of this subtle artist. Even a pocket book from Abrams' Discoveries series, Chardin: An Intimate Art, by Helene Prigent and Pierre Rosenberg, is far superior. Although its reproductions are minuscule by comparison, they are at least clear and clean, with colors that appear to be close to those of the original works. The little book may be only an hors d'oeuvre, but it has all the flavor that is missing in the full-course meal. --Peggy Moorman

From the Publisher:

The first fruits of Pierre Rosenberg's research were published in 1979 to great acclaim. This new work extends the boundaries of Chardin scholarship with new findings relating to the artist's life and the chronology of his oeuvre. Turning his back on the world of his contemporaries Fragonard and Boucher and evading easy but erroneous comparison with Flemish painters of interiors, Chardin gradually focused more and more on the spaces between objects rather than the objects themselves. As the details in his still life compositions shrink away, Chardin emerges as "the painter of pure painting" and the precursor of many artists a century or more later. Authoritative texts by Pierre Rosenberg and Renaud Temperini reveal Chardin's world, illuminated by his life, friends, and colleagues, and above all by the audience for whom he produced some of the most popular works of the eighteenth century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0300083483
• ISBN 13: 9780300083484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360