Chardin

by Pierre Rosenberg

Widely acknowledged in his time as a premier painter of still life and genre scenes, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) created unsentimentalized works that appeal to viewers today for their richness of feeling and simplicity of composition. This sumptuously illustrated book reproduces in full color 99 of Chardin’s works and arranges them around five Chardin’s Beginnings and His First Still Lifes, Utensils and Household Objects, Genre Scenes, Chardin’s Return to Still Life, and Pastels.

The contributors to the volume explore Chardin’s work from many different angles, including the latest thinking on such lesser-known facets of his life and work as his use of ceramics and glass, his financial and property affairs, and the complex history of engravings of his paintings. Each of the five sections of the book has an introduction and a selection of Chardin’s paintings accompanied on facing pages by complete provenance, exhibition, and bibliographic information. The book also offers an extensive Chardin biography, an index of names and places, and an index of works.



Published in association with Royal Academy Publications

Genres: Art

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Born in Paris, April 13, 1936, Pierre Rosenberg studied at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris, gaining a Law degree, and also graduated from the Ecole du Louvre. In 1962, he joined the Department of Paintings at the Louvre. This is where he made his career, starting as an assistant, later promoted curator of the heritage at the Department of Paintings. In October 1994, he was appointed Chief Executive of the Louvre, which had become a public institution in 1992. He left on April 13, 2001. From 1981 to 1993, he was also the curator of the National Museum of Franco-American Friendship Blérancourt.

After his Focillon scholarship at Yale University in 1961-1962, he was invited to stay at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1977) and at the University of Cambridge (1987) as Slade Professor. He held the chair of French painting at the Ecole du Louvre in 1970-1971. After a period as President of the French History of Art Society from 1982-1984, he was elected President of the French History of Art Committee in 1984. Since its founding in 1969, he has been part of the editorial board of the Journal Revue de l’art. He has contributed to XVIIecentury, Print Quarterly, Artibus et Historiae, Museum Management and Curatorship, the Revue du Louvre and Burlington Magazine. He is a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia), the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, and the Accademia del Disegno (Florence), the Accademia Pietro Vanucci (Perugia), the Ateneo Veneto (Venice), the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Venice) and Accademia Clementina (Bologna). He is also an honorary fellow at the Royal Academy (London).

His work as an art historian focussed essentially on 17th and 18th century French and Italian drawing and painting as well as on the history of collecting. He has written over two hundred articles in major journals and contributed to a publication dedicated to art historians of our time.

He was elected member of the French Academy on 7 December 1995.

Reviews

[Barbara Lovejoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I checked out this book from the library because I wanted to view all the paintings, which are AMAZING! I was not very interested at this time in reading the descriptions so I skimmed most of that information.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've found on Chardin. Good source for his large figure paintings.