302

OLD WORLD MASTERS

Chardin was born in Paris, Nov. 2, 1699, the son of a master-
carpenter and upholsterer, who was employed to make billiard-tables
for Louis XIV. After studying under Pierre Jacques Cazes, Chardin
entered the studio of Noel Nicolas Coypel. Before he was thirty he
had made a name as a painter of still-life. In 1728 Chardin was ad-
mitted to the Academic Royale and eventually became its treasurer.
In 1752 Louis XV bestowed a pension upon him and in 1757 gave him
rooms in the Louvre. In his middle period Chardin struck out in a
new path—that of frank realism, selecting for subjects scenes from the
domestic life of the bourgeoisie; but he treats everything, however,
with the distinction and taste that belonged to France in the Eight-
eenth Century. Therefore, he throws a poetic glamour around a
loaf of bread, a bunch of grapes, a plate of peaches, a sleeping cat, or
a copper casserole. Consequently, while his subjects are similar to
those of the “Little Dutch Masters,” Chardin introduces an elegance
and a quality of which those painters never dreamed. Neither Pieter
de Hoogh, nor Vermeer, excelled Chardin in effects of light, atmos-
phere, and iridescence. “Chardin,” Elie Faure writes, “did not
paint much because he paints slowly with a laborious and passionate
application. He has no models, but his wife, children, a few famil-
iar animals, the everyday tableware, and cooking-utensils and then
there are meat, vegetables, bread, and wine brought that same day
from the butcher, the meat-roaster, the baker, and the vegetable
seller. With these he writes the legend of domestic labor and of ob-
scure life: his images speak to us after the manner of La Fontaine’s
words and he is, with Watteau and Goya, the greatest painter there is
in Europe between the death of Rembrandt and the maturity of
Corot and of Delacroix.”
Chardin is an artist beloved by artists. In a sympathetic criticism,
Armand-Dayot writes:
“It is not by accident that I am using this word metier: beaute du
metier—all is comprised in that phrase. By this phrase the greater
number of the French artists of the Eighteenth Century should be
judged. La beaute du metier—that expresses all their efforts. And,
indeed, what formula could better define Chardin than the beaute du