Keywords: Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Siméon, Attributes of the Painter, ca. 1725-27.jpg Artwork Creator Jean Siméon Chardin Catalogue Entry Chardin practiced an art form that by tradition was not of a high rank in the academic hierarchy still life was placed lower than history painting portraiture genre scenes or even animal painting Parisian by birth and at first apprenticed to history painters Chardin found a vocation in the humble genre of still-life painting although he also painted figural scenes of contemporary life combining children or kitchen maids with still-life elements As Chardin rose from shop-sign painter to member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture where he was admitted to the ranks as a painter of still life in 1728 he gained the admiration of artists and collectors and even the art critic Denis Diderot who considered him a genius These paintings probably a pair of overdoors for a small study testify to Chardin ™s preternatural powers of observation and ability to render different substances in paint They also are moral portraits of the owners of the tools the artist and the architect It has been noted that the dabs of paint on the palette are the colors used in the painting as if the artist were providing a glimpse of his working practice Attributes of the Painter includes a further wry self-referential element in the small sculpture which Jennifer Montagu has identified as a model by François Duquesnoy for the executioner holding up the head of John the Baptist in a sculpted tableau of the martyrdom of Chardin ™s patron saint Gallery Label In the hierarchy established by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in ancien régime France still-life painting ranked lower than history painting portraiture genre scenes and even animal painting Yet Chardin turned this apparent disadvantage into a strength with collectors and critics delighting in the illusions of reality that he produced His concern for creating a total visual experience through composition spatial manipulation color and a loose painting technique led his contemporaries to observe that his still lifes ”which close up read as a flurry of strokes ”have a startling immediacy and naturalism In Attributes of the Painter the artist ™s palette shows the actual colors of pigments used in the painting providing a record of the artist ™s method of organizing his working tools circa 1725 -27 Oil on canvas Size cm 50 86 <br> frame Size cm 70 8 108 9 6 2 Institution Princeton University Art Museum European Art object history Anonymous sale Paris May 15 1879 lots 27-28; anonymous sale Paris April 19 1880 lots 8-9; anonymous sale Lair-Dubreuil Paris April 24 1907 lots 13-14 to Flameng; François Flameng Paris 1907 “1919; sale Galerie Georges Petit Paris May 26 1919 lots 5-6 ; Jules Féral Paris; Demotte Paris and New York in 1935; sold to Helen Clay Frick for Princeton University Art Museum exhibition history credit line Gift of Helen Clay Frick accession number y1935-4 place of creation France Princeton University Art Museum PD-old-100 1779 cite book Steward James Christen Princeton University Art Museum Handbook of the Collections Revised and Expanded Edition 2013 Princeton University Art Museum Princeton NJ 978-0943012414 2nd 204 cite web Attributes of the Painter y1935-4 http //artmuseum princeton edu/collections/objects/20106 Princeton University Art Museum French paintings in the Princeton University Art Museum 1725 Still-life paintings in the Princeton University Art Museum 1725 Still-life paintings by Jean Siméon Chardin Overdoor paintings Paintings by Jean Siméon Chardin |