Because art school students began by drawing inanimate objects—jugs and jars, apples and pears, plaster casts of hands and feet—most avoided the still life or nature morte in their professional lives, particularly since the market for such paintings was vanishingly small. The form dwindled even more following the invention of photography, to the relief of most painters, who were glad to escape, as one put it, “the tyranny of the anecdote.”
An artist might be commissioned to paint a house or some other treasure as a permanent souvenir. Occasionally someone wanted paintings of fruit or flowers to brighten a home during winter, while compositions showing pheasants, hares or a turkey next to silver objets d’art reminded guests of their host’s prosperity, social standing and skill in hunting.
In 1827, a former general of Napoleon, Charles Yves César Cyr du Coëtlosquet, commissioned Eugène Delacroix to create a painting for the dining room of his chateau. Nature morte au homard (Still Life with Lobster) shows two cooked lobsters lying on a dish, next to a pheasant, a jay and a hare. Nearby are a hunting rifle and a bag for carrying game. Inspired by a recent visit to England, Delacroix shows the dish sitting in a typical British landscape, with huntsmen in the distance. The painting has a sly political element. Unsympathetic with the general’s right-wing views, Delacroix chose lobsters and other gibier as emblems of political conservatism.
It was rare for an artist to specialize in the nature morte. One who did, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), was even more exceptional in possessing a technique and sensibility that would have made him a master no matter what his subject. According to his friend, the philosopher and critic Denis Diderot, “To look at pictures by other artists, it seems that I need to borrow a different pair of eyes. To look at those of Chardin, I only have to keep the eyes that nature gave me and make good use of them.”
Chardin admired such Dutch masters as Vermeer for the pleasure they took in simple domestic objects. He painted bowls, jugs and dishes, the last frequently heaped with fruit. Almost nothing sold until Charles-André van Loo, a member of the Royal Academy and resoundingly successful because of his huge history paintings, visited by Place Dauphine, a quiet park on the Île de la Cité where Chardin’s work was on show. Once van Loo bought a painting, the art world took a new interest. Applying for membership of the Academy in 1728, Chardin submitted two canvases of uncompromising simplicity. La Raie (The Ray) showed a table of seafood invaded by a greedy kitten, while in Le Buffet (The Buffet), a dining table is dominated by a bowl heaped with fruit.
Saying Grace, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Salon of 1740, Musée du Louvre
Despite the bucolic character of his work, the Academy accepted him, but only after rigorous vetting. Chardin grumbled, “You can be sure that most of the high positions in the country would be empty if one were admitted only after an examination as severe as the one we painters must pass.” Endorsement by the rest of the artistic establishment took longer. Some—probably correctly—saw his placid domestic interiors as an implied sneer at their images of battles and incidents in the life of Napoleon.
Chardin did eventually widen his choice of subjects, piqued by the comment of a friend, Jacques-André-Joseph Aved. Aved complained about the small fees he was offered for portraits. Chardin replied that one should never turn down a commission, no matter how poorly paid.
“Easy for you to say,” Aved replied. “A portrait is harder to paint than a saveloy sausage.”
Taking this as a challenge, Chardin started painting portraits. To the further irritation of his colleagues, however, he ignored the rich, who might have commissioned studies of themselves and their families. Instead, he painted their servants as they washed clothes, peeled vegetables, fetched water and took care of the master’s children, whom Chardin shows as lazy, idling their time away, blowing bubbles, spinning tops or building houses of cards. These images confirmed the suspicion that Chardin was at least partly a social satirist, and his canvases an assault on a society which pursued pleasure but placed no value on domestic labor. Although Louis XV owned the 1740 Le Bénédicité (Saying Grace), showing a maid instructing the two children under her care to pray before eating, the implied criticism of moral decline probably went over his head.
More than a century after his death, the Impressionists, who shared his dislike of “story” paintings, “discovered” Chardin. As a student, Henri Matisse spent weeks in the Louvre, meticulously copying his work in order to analyze his style, while Paul Cézanne’s studies of the natural world clearly owed something to the earlier master. In addition, Pablo Picasso painted his own versions of La Raie and other Chardin canvases.
Chardin also did a number of self-portraits, about which novelist Marcel Proust wrote with enthusiasm:
Above his enormous pince-nez that have slipped down to the end of his nose, which they grip with their two brand-new glass discs … Way above them, lifeless eyes, with high, worn-out pupils that seem to have seen a lot, laughed a lot, loved a lot, and to say with a boastful, tender tone ‘Well yes, I am old!’ Beneath the lifeless softness that age has lent them, the eyes are still aflame. But the eyelids, tired as an over-used clasp, are red around the rim.
Self-portrait with Spectacles (1771 ) and The Buffet (1728), Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Musée du Louvre
Proust was right to single out Chardin’s eyes, since the painter’s sight was progressively affected by the lead in his pigments. Once he could no longer use oils, he turned to pastels, at which he proved no less expert. When a colleague asked if he missed the colors of oil painting, Chardin replied, “Who told you one paints with colors? One makes use of pigments, but one paints with one’s emotions.”