DOI issue:
Nr. 342 (November 1925)
DOI article:Breuning, Margaret: Chardin the unfashionable
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19986#0136
inUgRHAClOnAL
serene happiness in the sympathetic companion-
ship and devotion of his wife. His son showed
artistic talent, but inherited none of his father's
stability. Reckless and erratic, he met his death
in Venice under circumstances never fully under-
stood.
Crushed by this blow which struck at both his
deep affection and his ambition for his son, and
suffering from physical infirmities, he gladly ac-
cepted the king's offer of a lodging in a wing of
the Louvre. Even in his enfeebled condition and
with failing eyesight, he continued to work. His
pastels belong to this period. It is in these last
shadowed years that their magic color bloomed
so marvelously. Strange irony of fate that in
another wing of this palace than the one that
sheltered the stricken old man ignored by his
generation, there is today a group of his canvases
that form one of the unforgettable glories of the
Louvre's collections.
So much for the meagre facts of his life.
Always for him, and for us, too, the important
fact was that he was a painter. Painting was the
passion and absorption of his life. So acute was
his observation, so swift his esthetic response,
that he needed no outside stimulus to urge him to
artistic creation. Within the four walls of his little
dwelling, on the white cloth laid for the family
meal, in the contents of the thrifty market basket
sprawling out its fruits and vegetables and its
gleaming fish, there was so much material to
excite and stimulate the sensitive vision and set
the creative impulse in motion that a lifetime was
short shrift to seize it all.
It is sometimes said that Chardin first painted
still life and later genre subjects. Actually he
never painted still life, for everything became
amazingly alive under his brush. Moreover, he
handled a nature morte with the same breadth as
a figure painting and gave it the same profundity
of consideration. Beauty of tone, lustre of surface,
magical effects of light that steeps and dissolves
the jug and platter, the onions and carrots, and
SIGN FOR THE PERFUMER, PINAOD
the cauldron for the pot au feu itself, till they
become a sort of radiant harmony, luminous and
unified—these are his still Iifes vibrating with life.
Whether in a still life or in the painting of an
interior with its figures of intimate living, the
marvel of this transfused light never ceases to
astound one. Here again is that discretion and
poise that so characterize the man, for there is no
tragic chiaroscuro, no dramatic contrast of deep
shadows and dazzling brilliance, but a bath of
silvered illumination, exquisitely modulated, eat-
ing up the very substance of solid things, or filling
the whole canvas with air and light.
As for painting figures, it was the next step in
the artist's interest in form. It is said that he
turned to this phase because of the taunt of a
fellow artist that it was "harder to paint a por-
trait than a sausage," but the development is so
natural that it needs no explanation. In these
scenes of everyday life—the simple, orderly, fam-
ily life that flowed about him and nourished his
existence—there is tenderness, but there is also
restraint. There is no sentimentality, nothing
obvious in treatment or motive, but the dignity
and beauty of human relationship exquisitely
interpreted. There is something quaint and sweet,
something most engaging in these charming bits
of intimate life, that sounds like a clear, calm
harmony above the discordance and exaggeration
of that decadent day.
As a colorist, of course, Chardin must first be
reckoned. He was a deep student of the science
of color and knew how to apply his theories, so
that his divisions of tones, his juxtapositions and
oppositions of color and his whole chromatic
theory place him rather with the impressionists of
the next century than in his own clay. Small
wonder is it that a contemporary exclaimed that
Chardin's method of painting was "unusual."
But he not only understood color, he loved it.
What luscious color it is! What nacreous greys,
what white held against white, what subtle modu-
lations, what surprisingly bold transitions.
BY CHARDIN
one thirty-six
NOVEMBER I 9 2 j
serene happiness in the sympathetic companion-
ship and devotion of his wife. His son showed
artistic talent, but inherited none of his father's
stability. Reckless and erratic, he met his death
in Venice under circumstances never fully under-
stood.
Crushed by this blow which struck at both his
deep affection and his ambition for his son, and
suffering from physical infirmities, he gladly ac-
cepted the king's offer of a lodging in a wing of
the Louvre. Even in his enfeebled condition and
with failing eyesight, he continued to work. His
pastels belong to this period. It is in these last
shadowed years that their magic color bloomed
so marvelously. Strange irony of fate that in
another wing of this palace than the one that
sheltered the stricken old man ignored by his
generation, there is today a group of his canvases
that form one of the unforgettable glories of the
Louvre's collections.
So much for the meagre facts of his life.
Always for him, and for us, too, the important
fact was that he was a painter. Painting was the
passion and absorption of his life. So acute was
his observation, so swift his esthetic response,
that he needed no outside stimulus to urge him to
artistic creation. Within the four walls of his little
dwelling, on the white cloth laid for the family
meal, in the contents of the thrifty market basket
sprawling out its fruits and vegetables and its
gleaming fish, there was so much material to
excite and stimulate the sensitive vision and set
the creative impulse in motion that a lifetime was
short shrift to seize it all.
It is sometimes said that Chardin first painted
still life and later genre subjects. Actually he
never painted still life, for everything became
amazingly alive under his brush. Moreover, he
handled a nature morte with the same breadth as
a figure painting and gave it the same profundity
of consideration. Beauty of tone, lustre of surface,
magical effects of light that steeps and dissolves
the jug and platter, the onions and carrots, and
SIGN FOR THE PERFUMER, PINAOD
the cauldron for the pot au feu itself, till they
become a sort of radiant harmony, luminous and
unified—these are his still Iifes vibrating with life.
Whether in a still life or in the painting of an
interior with its figures of intimate living, the
marvel of this transfused light never ceases to
astound one. Here again is that discretion and
poise that so characterize the man, for there is no
tragic chiaroscuro, no dramatic contrast of deep
shadows and dazzling brilliance, but a bath of
silvered illumination, exquisitely modulated, eat-
ing up the very substance of solid things, or filling
the whole canvas with air and light.
As for painting figures, it was the next step in
the artist's interest in form. It is said that he
turned to this phase because of the taunt of a
fellow artist that it was "harder to paint a por-
trait than a sausage," but the development is so
natural that it needs no explanation. In these
scenes of everyday life—the simple, orderly, fam-
ily life that flowed about him and nourished his
existence—there is tenderness, but there is also
restraint. There is no sentimentality, nothing
obvious in treatment or motive, but the dignity
and beauty of human relationship exquisitely
interpreted. There is something quaint and sweet,
something most engaging in these charming bits
of intimate life, that sounds like a clear, calm
harmony above the discordance and exaggeration
of that decadent day.
As a colorist, of course, Chardin must first be
reckoned. He was a deep student of the science
of color and knew how to apply his theories, so
that his divisions of tones, his juxtapositions and
oppositions of color and his whole chromatic
theory place him rather with the impressionists of
the next century than in his own clay. Small
wonder is it that a contemporary exclaimed that
Chardin's method of painting was "unusual."
But he not only understood color, he loved it.
What luscious color it is! What nacreous greys,
what white held against white, what subtle modu-
lations, what surprisingly bold transitions.
BY CHARDIN
one thirty-six
NOVEMBER I 9 2 j