Chardin’s Transcendent Brush

Jean-Siméon Chardin’s use of light and incandescence in his still lifes lures viewers into the quiet threshold of inner life.
Chardin’s Transcendent Brush
Detail of "Glass of Water and Coffeepot," circa 1761, by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin.
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Experiencing a painting of Jean-Siméon Chardin’s (1699–1779) is like warming your hands at a hearth. A Chardin enchants, drawing you into its contemplative world through the senses. The visual world expressed on canvas is so absorbing that you can hear its white noise, smell its aromas, and sense its stillness.

Denis Diderot, the 18th-century art critic, wrote about his experience at the Salon of 1767: “One stops in front of a Chardin as if by instinct, just as a traveler exhausted by his trip tends to sit down, almost without noticing it, in a place that’s green, quiet, well-watered, shady, and cool.” Diderot is not alone in commenting on the intuitively immersive spirit of Chardin’s paintings. Viewers of his art from the 18th century until today characterize Chardin’s oeuvre as a threshold to inner life.

Amidst the theatrical, rococo clamor of monumental 18th-century history paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher, the subdued tones of a Chardin still life beckon with a murmur, lapping you in peaceful waves like the soft heat radiating off a fire. Known for his contemplative and unassuming arrangements of ordinary objects, Chardin used color harmonies, varied paint application, and value compression to evoke an atmosphere of absorption in his paintings of everyday life.

‘Glass of Water and Coffeepot’

"Glass of Water and Coffeepot," circa 1761, by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Oil on canvas; 12 ¾ inches by 16 ¼ inches. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. (Public Domain)
"Glass of Water and Coffeepot," circa 1761, by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Oil on canvas; 12 ¾ inches by 16 ¼ inches. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Public Domain

In his still life “Glass of Water and Coffeepot” (1761), Chardin paints a simple composition of garlic bulbs, copper coffee pot, and glass of water. The coffee pot and water glass are abbreviated cones—their forms inversions of one another—creating compositional balance. While the charred coffee pot is opaque, painted in mottled, rusty terracotta with apricot-tinted highlights, the glass is transparent, rendered in a deep phthalo with specular misty highlights.

Three bulbs of garlic are painted with papery skin that flakes like ancient wallpaper. The use of opaque pigment in the highlights establishes dimensionality, presaging Chardin’s transition to pastel paintings in the 1770s (the last decade of his career).

Continuing to juxtapose opposites for a harmonious effect, Chardin establishes the light source to the left of the composition, in front of the picture plane, creating value contrasts with the glass and coffee pot. In this way, the earth toned background gradates from shadow to light, the light glass arranged in front of the darkest moment on the wall while the blackened copper vessel stands in front of the lighter part of the wall.

The flowering stem of the rightmost garlic bulb spills out over the edge of the stone slab, breaking the flat surface of the foreground and edging into the viewer’s personal space. A bright apricot stroke of paint further highlights the plane change from the slab’s edge to its top, alluding to brick orange notes on the coffee pot. Color harmonies abound. The misty teal and lilac repeat themselves in the garlic stalk, moments of reflected light on the stone ledge, and in the frosty highlights in the glass of water.

Incandescent Plums

"Basket of Plums," 1765, by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Oil on canvas; 12 3/4 inches by 16 1/2 inches. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. (<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chardin_-_Basket_of_Plums,_1765.jpg#file" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Chrysler E-museum</a>/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED</a>)
"Basket of Plums," 1765, by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Oil on canvas; 12 3/4 inches by 16 1/2 inches. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. Chrysler E-museum/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED

“Basket of Plums” (1765) depicts a wicker basket heaping with plums amidst a smattering of cherries, currants, and walnuts. A twisted piece of hemp, tied to the basket for use as a handle, flops over the contour of the stone ledge, forcing its way into the viewer’s space just as the garlic’s stalk and flowering stem overflow in “Glass of Water and Coffeepot.” One of the plums stands out as especially incandescent, its skin rendered with dusty pastel highlights that evoke the fuzzy coating of wax bloom.

Scattered about the wicker basket, the carefully arranged white currants and red cherries are glossy and translucent, their spherical bodies reflecting the light source. An errant red currant has wandered off to the left, straying from its family, its placement alluding to red notes in the wicker basket and cherries. Next to it, two walnuts lean toward each other, their woody, fibrous quality brought to life by chalky drags of paint.

Both “Glass of Water and Coffeepot” and “Basket of Plums” convey the effect of being lit from within. This quality of light, modulated by carefully controlled tonal gradations and value organization, creates a sense of magic, elevating the plums and glass from their status as ordinary objects to nearly divine forms.

Enchantment and Absorption

"Le Bocal d'olives ("Jar of Olives"), 1760, by Jean Baptiste Chardin. Oil on canvas; 30 inches by 38 1/2 inches. Louvre, Paris. (Public Domain)
"Le Bocal d'olives ("Jar of Olives"), 1760, by Jean Baptiste Chardin. Oil on canvas; 30 inches by 38 1/2 inches. Louvre, Paris. Public Domain

Diderot, remarking on Chardin’s “Jar of Olives” (1760), wrote, “Oh Chardin! It’s not white, red, or black pigment that you crush on your palette; it’s the very substance of the objects, it’s air and light that you take up with the tip of your brush and fix onto the canvas.” Certainly, the distance between nature and representation is collapsed in a Chardin.

Just as poetry penetrates beyond the veil of reason, grasping at the truth of sensation, so too does Chardin’s brush speak directly through the painter’s mediation of color. His canvases are poetry. It’s for this reason that Diderot’s words over 250 years ago still ring true. We pause in front of a Chardin out of a natural tendency to give ourselves up to the tranquil atmosphere Chardin invites us into, becoming completely absorbed by the enchantment that resides in its forms.
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Mari Otsu
Mari Otsu
Author
Mari Otsu has a BA in art history and psychology and learned classical drawing and oil painting in Grand Central Atelier's core program.