Chardin Jean Baptiste pictures and biography. Chardin, Jean Baptiste Simeon Painting technique and new subjects

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) naturalist, introduced the term "biology" In everything that nature works on, it does nothing

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), philosopher, theologian Willy-nilly, man again comes to himself and in everything he sees, he considers himself. There is no future for man, expected as a result of evolution, outside of his union with others people. We know ourselves and

Teilhard de Chardin Pierre (1881-1955) - French naturalist, member of the Jesuit order (1899), priest (since 1911), thinker and mystic. A descendant of Voltaire, who was the great-uncle of T.'s mother. The author of the concept of "Christian evolutionism". Professor of the Department of Geology

Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin - great French artist of the 18th century. He became best known as an unsurpassed master of still life and genre painting. The work of Chardin had a great influence on the flowering of realism in the 18th century.

French painter Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin was born in 1699. He lived all his life in Paris, in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres quarter. The artist's teachers were Pierre Jacques Kaz (1676-1754) and Noel Nicolas Coypel (1690-1734). He became famous after the "Debutante Exhibition" in 1728, where he presented several of his paintings. Later he was admitted to the Academy as "a painter of flowers, fruits and genre scenes." The artist's contemporaries, as well as connoisseurs of painting in subsequent years, have always admired Chardin's ability to see the essence of objects and convey the full range of colors and shades. This feature of the artist allowed him to create unusually realistic and deep canvases. His paintings are characterized by emotional subtlety, elaboration of details, clarity of image, harmony and richness of colors. The main characters of his portraits are ordinary people of the third estate, who are busy with everyday affairs.

In 1728, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin was admitted to the Paris Academy of Arts. From 1737 he was a regular participant in the Paris Salons. In 1743 he became advisor to the Academy of Arts, and in 1750 treasurer of the Academy. Since 1765 he was a member of the Rouen Academy of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts. The great French artist died on December 6, 1779. After himself, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin left a rich legacy. His paintings are in major museums around the world, including in St. Petersburg.

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Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin paintings with titles

self-portrait

Attributes of art and the awards that correspond to them

Buffet

Governess

Girl cleaning vegetables

Girl with racket and shuttlecock

Canary

House of Cards II

Sex boy in the cellar

Prayer before dinner

Bubble

Still life with attributes of the arts

Still life with grapes and pomegranates

Still life with game and a hunting dog

Laundress

peddler

Caring Servant

Draftsman

Silver tureen

silver goblet

hardworking mother

Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) - French painter, one of the most famous artists of the XVIII century and one of the best colorists in the history of painting, famous for his work in the field of still life and genre painting.

Biography of Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin

A student of Pierre-Jacques Caza and Noel Coypel, Chardin was born and spent his whole life in the Parisian quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. There is no evidence that he ever traveled outside the French capital. Helping Kuapel to perform accessories in his paintings, he acquired an extraordinary art of depicting inanimate objects of all kinds and decided to devote himself exclusively to their reproduction.

Creativity Chardin

He became known early to the Parisian public as an excellent master of still life. This was largely due to the Paris "debutante exhibition", which took place on the Place Dauphine. So, in 1728, he presented several canvases there, among which was the still life "Scat". The painting impressed Nicolas de Largillière, an honorary member of the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture, so much that he invited the young artist to exhibit his works within the walls of the academy.

Subsequently, the painter insisted that Chardin compete for a place at the Academy. Already in September, his candidacy was accepted, and he was listed as "a depiction of flowers, fruits and genre scenes."

Perfectly mastering the knowledge of color relations, Chardin subtly felt the interconnection of objects and the originality of their structure.

Diderot admired the skill with which the artist makes you feel the movement of juices under the skin of the fruit. In the color of the object, Chardin saw many shades and conveyed them with small strokes. Its white color is woven from similar shades. The gray and brown tones that Chardin owned are unusually numerous. Penetrating the canvas, the rays of light give the subject clarity and clarity.

The paintings of genre painting, distinguished by their naive simplicity of content, the strength and harmony of colors, the softness and richness of the brush, even more than Chardin's previous works, put him forward from a number of contemporary artists and strengthened one of his prominent places in the history of French painting. In 1728 he was assigned to the Paris Academy of Arts, in 1743 he was elected to its advisers, in 1750 he assumed the position of its treasurer; in addition, since 1765 he was a member of the Rouen Academy of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts.

In works of different years and different genres, such as Laundress (1737), Jar of Olives (1760) or Attributes of the Arts (1766), Chardin always remains an excellent draftsman and colorist, an artist of a “quiet life”, a poet everyday life; his gaze and tender gaze spiritualizes the most mundane objects.

In the last years of his life, Chardin turned to pastels and created several magnificent portraits (self-portrait, 1775), in which he showed his inherent emotional subtlety, but also the ability for psychological analysis.

Encyclopedists did a lot to spread the fame of Chardin, who contrasted his “bourgeois” art with court artists “torn away from the people” - masters of erotic and pastoral vignettes in the spirit of rococo.

Diderot compared his skill to witchcraft:

“Oh, Chardin, it is not the white, red and black paints that you grind on your palette, but the very essence of objects; you take air and light at the tip of your brush and lay them on the canvas!”

Artist's work

• Mrs. Chardin
• Cook cleaning turnips
• Washerwomen
• card lock
• Prayer before dinner
• girl reading a letter
• Art attributes
• Still life with a turkey
• Still life with fruit
• Still life
• Copper water tank
• hardworking mother

At the head of Chardin, a galaxy of masters entered the art of the 18th century, opposing a sincere and simple story about the nature of court ceremonial Rococo painting. Chardin was not only the creator of the still lifes and everyday scenes that glorified him, but also one of the founders of the new portrait concept in European painting of the Enlightenment. He was one of the first French artists to turn to the genre type of portrait, which was an important stage in the development of 18th century painting, just like the realistic everyday genre.

Chardin's works, which are the pride of European and American museums, captivate with the special natural simplicity of nature, the warmth and humanity with which it is conveyed by the artist. The words of Chardin, said to one of his contemporaries: “Who told you that they paint with paints? They use colors, but write with feeling”, reveal his deep emotional comprehension of the image (person or object). Thanks to this, the viewer is drawn into the sphere of vision of nature by the artist, inspired by his feelings. Like no other, Chardin was able to express the heightened sensitivity of the Enlightenment age in the ability to find subtleties in the most general things. He was a master of his time, whose motto was the words of Denis Diderot that one should "look into reality and not try to decorate it."

The artist's father was a master carpenter, and Chardin was brought up in a semi-artisan, semi-artistic environment. While studying in the studios of famous painters (where, perhaps, he was just an assistant), P.Zh. Casa, N.N. Kuapel, J.B. Vanloo Chardin was noticed and invited to participate in the restoration of the murals of the Royal Palace in Fontainebleau under the direction of Vanloo. Almost simultaneously, he painted a sign commissioned by a Parisian surgeon, which depicted a crowd of street onlookers standing around the wounded man. The genre scene with its amusingness attracted the audience who saw it at the exhibition. Chardin's two early still lifes, Skate and Buffet (both 1728, Paris, Louvre), were also noted, for which he was accepted as a member of the Paris Royal Academy of Arts in 1728. In both paintings, the beauty of simple things is poetically conveyed - fish and kitchen utensils silvering against a greenish background, and dishes made of dark glass standing on a white tablecloth surrounded by scattered fruits. An element of entertainment is introduced by a cat stalking the fish and a dog barking at the table with dishes, as in the paintings of the Flemish and Dutch masters. However, unlike the baroque still lifes of these northern artists, Chardin's nature does not look so impressive and advantageously arranged. Of course, the artist deeply thought out every nuance in its arrangement, and each still life of Chardin makes you feel his special gift in the sense of the objectivity of the world.

The artist spent his whole life in Paris, without leaving anywhere. In 1724 he received the honorary title of member of the Roman Academy of St. Luke. By this time he was already known as a master of still life. In 1731, Chardin married Françoise Marguerite Saintard, and in the same year his son was born. He lived in Paris, preferring to portray people of his circle, did not like to create works on official orders, although Frederick II, Catherine II, Gustav III, and many representatives of the brilliant European aristocracy sought to have his works. From the 1730s, Chardin turned to painting everyday scenes and genre portraits, creating many of his best canvases in the period 1730-1740: Return from the Market (1739, Paris, Louvre), The Governess (1738, Ottawa , National Gallery), "The Cook (Woman Peeling Vegetables)" (1738, Washington, National Gallery of Art), "Hardworking Mother", "Prayer Before Dinner" (both - 1740, Paris, Louvre). Chardin always went to them from the image of a real life motive, giving it significance, leading a leisurely story about an everyday event, about objects related to a person's environment. The artist's interest in the works of the Dutch masters of the 17th century was natural in the search for a lively and natural interpretation of nature. Chardin often repeated these scenes depicting mothers raising children or doing housework, so many museums and private collections have versions of these paintings. In giving truthfulness to the scenes, the role of the interior is great. The brush of the master of still life painted vegetables, dishes on the table, objects scattered in the hallway. They tell about the way of life of ordinary citizens, people of the third estate, to which the artist himself belonged. In contrast to the bright luminous colors of the Dutch genre painters, the brown, green, blue, and white colors prevailing in Chardin's canvases add a discreet coloration.

Serious concentration in doing something (reading, playing cards or going to school, blowing soap bubbles, drawing, writing a letter) is also called upon to emphasize the objects surrounding the model in genre portraits ("House of Cards", 1741, "Young Teacher", circa 1740, both - Washington, National Gallery of Art; "Boy with a Spinning Top" (1738, Paris, Louvre), Chardin was especially fond of depicting children, in whose images he was attracted by inner liveliness and spontaneity.His frequent models were the sons of the jeweler Godefroy - Jr Auguste-Gabriel, captured in the painting "Boy with a Spinning Top", and ten-year-old Charles ("Portrait of Charles Godefroy", 1738, Paris, Louvre). Chardin is not captivated by the disclosure of a fleeting expression of feelings or the psychological complexity of a child's image, but by a story about a person in his environment. And each child's portrait created by the artist is, as it were, a fragment of an everyday scene.All this gives Chardin's children's images a great lyrical charm.

Since 1737, the artist has become a regular participant in the Parisian salons, which reopened after a long break. Marchands and critics like his works, they are often reproduced in engraving by famous masters. Diderot, noting the originality of his work, enthusiastically writes: "Chardin is an intelligent artist who is perfectly able to talk about his art"; "That's who knows how to create harmony of colors and chiaroscuro!" - he exclaims admiringly about the color of Chardin.

The painting skill of the artist improves over the years. The melodic unified tonal sound of flowers in such masterpieces of Chardin as “Still Life with a Pipe” (1737, Paris, Louvre) or “Cut Melon” (1760, Paris, private collection) is striking in its softness and variety. He composes his calm, balanced compositions in still lifes from kitchen items, dead game, fruits, musical instruments, attributes of painting, sculpture, architecture, and science. The selection of objects in each canvas is determined by coloristic tasks, but besides this, it always carries a deep inner meaning, equally poetizing the world of simple everyday activities, like “kitchen” still lifes, or giving things an allegorical sound, in their story about the intellectual inclinations of a person. century of the Enlightenment (Attributes of Science, 1731, Paris, Jacquemart-André Museum). The beauty of the graceful forms of each object is emphasized in the canvas with an exquisite selection of things. Still life with a pipe. An open tobacco box with a pipe leaning against it, a white earthenware jug and a cup that absorbed many color reflections tell about the fashion and life of the era when smoking overseas tobacco was a custom in European countries.

The ideals of the era of enlightenment thought were expressed by the artist in canvases on the theme “Still life with attributes of art”, variants of which belong to the Louvre, the Jacquemart-André Museum, the Hermitage, the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin. The Hermitage canvas (1766) was executed by Chardin on the order of Catherine II for the Academy of Arts, but remained in the apartments of the Empress. The emotional expressiveness of the color of the still life was noted by Diderot, who wrote: “How rosary the masses! How one thing is reflected in another! You don’t know what exactly the charm lies in, because it is spilled everywhere ... ”In a clear rhythm, the artist arranged his objects - a figure of Mercury, a folder with drawings, a box for paints and a palette, scrolls of drawings and a preparation, books. On a warm red-brown tone, the underpainting is painted in relief with dense strokes of all these objects, illuminated by soft light. The selection of objects, including the order cross of St. Michael on the ribbon and the medal as a symbol of the artist’s meritorious work, as in all the allegories of the Enlightenment, without complexity tells about the artist’s profession, about his special new free status granted to him by time.

The last decade of the artist's work was overshadowed by his resignation at the Academy, weakened eyesight, and less attention from the public. However, the works created during this period became outstanding works of French painting of the 18th century. Chardin turns to pastel, creating genuine masterpieces in this technique - Self-Portrait with a Green Visor (1775, Paris, Louvre) and Portrait of a Wife (1776, Chicago, Art Institute). Diderot also speaks with admiration of his pastel "Self-portrait" of 1771 (Paris, Louvre) and, wanting to support the aging artist, writes about the things shown in the Salon of 1771: "All the same confident hand and the same eyes, accustomed to seeing nature" . Later portraits marked a new stage not only in his art, but also in European portraiture of the 18th century. Genre motifs are now excluded by the artist. He turns to a new form of chamber portrait, replacing the lyrical narrative about a man of the third estate with a deeper generalization. In the image of Marguerite, the artist's wife, the character of a woman whose life was spent in anxiety and concern for her neighbors is revealed. A satin dressing gown and an awkwardly fitting cap do not detract from the noble appearance of a beautiful woman in the past.

The artist also presented himself in home clothes in Self-Portrait with a Green Visor. A bandage on the head, on which a visor is attached, and a neckerchief tied in a loose knot, are the attributes of old and comfortable professional clothes. A calm, insightful look from under the visor is also a feature of the profession. The possibilities of intimate characterization were used to the maximum in Chardin's later portraits, which anticipated future discoveries in the works of such major masters as O. Fragonard and J.L. David.

Elena Fedotova

The 18th century is the time of the brilliant flowering of French culture. Pre-revolutionary France was for the whole of Europe an undeniable trendsetter of fashions and tastes, literary and philosophical hobbies, lifestyle. All this was swept away by the revolution of 1789. In those days, there was a saying: who did not live in France before the revolution, he does not know what real life is. All kinds of pleasures were meant - aesthetic and others, which reached a special sophistication in the pre-revolutionary period.

The high professional level of art was demonstrated annually at exhibitions called Salons, for which works were selected by a strict academic jury. The whimsical interior decoration developed into the Rococo style, which embraced various types and genres of fine and applied arts included in the ensemble of interior decoration. In this diversity and brilliance, it is not difficult to get lost even for an outstanding master of academic compositions. But Chardin, who never painted historical paintings, formal portraits, or rocaille gallant scenes, limiting himself to the “lowest” genres - still life and everyday life, not only did not get lost, but turned out to be higher and more significant than all this brilliant tinsel of rococo and salon academism , became the central figure of French painting of the XVIII century and one of the most prominent Western European artists.

Chardin came from a Parisian artisan background, his father was a craftsman who specialized in making billiard tables. This environment was distinguished by strict morals and diligence, the husband got up early and from morning till night prepared products to order or for sale, achieving the highest quality, and the wife was in charge of the household. They lived pleasingly, in austerity, economically and soberly, sensibly and industriously, and their whole life was colored by love for the hearth, loved ones, family traditions, high pathos of human dignity, which is manifested in humility and pious labor no less than in aristocratic duels. and military exploits.

This way of the craft environment will become both the subject of Chardin's image and the spirit that feeds his work and shaped his amazing style. The artist's father was tearing himself up, diligently grinding the surface of the billiard table, the slightest unevenness on which turned it into a cheap kitchen table that was not worth the materials spent. With the same perseverance and meaningful zeal, Chardin pored over his little pictures from early youth until his death at an advanced age. He wrote them for a long time, lovingly, diligently and carefully.

Having been trained by academic painters, masters of the historical painting of Vanloo and Kuapel, Chardin, however, refrained from writing historical paintings. All his life he lamented that he did not have a proper education, did not know mythology, history and literature, and therefore could not competently take on a historical plot. Therefore, he painted what he knew well - the objects that surrounded the Parisian tradesman, the cozy interiors in which he lived.

The first works of the artist were still lifes, kitchen and hunting trophies (not without the influence of Vanloo), in which he tried to stand “on tiptoe” in the lower genre of dead nature, giving it an aristocratic hunting character, then abundantly baroque, if these are kitchen items. His early canvases were successful in a professional environment, and, after a short stay in the modest minor Academy of St. Luke, the twenty-nine-year-old Chardin in 1628 was admitted to the royal academy of arts in the specialty of "dead nature". At the Academy, Chardin, as a modest, conscientious and benevolent person, took root and was its permanent treasurer and chairman of the meetings. From his statements, the appeal has been preserved: “More gentleness, gentlemen, more gentleness,” they say, there is no need to criticize each other, the artist’s craft is very difficult, a rare one of those who have studied for decades achieves success, many never became artists, abandoned it is a difficult occupation, becoming soldiers or actors; even behind a mediocre picture are decades of study and years of painstaking work on this canvas. With such softness, Chardin was, however, not entirely harmless. At the Salon exposition, he could hang pictures of academicians in contrast to unobtrusively set off their shortcomings; but in his utterances he was extremely cautious and benevolent.

Special mention should be made of the Salon. This is an annual review of the best works created by the best artists of France, for which the works were selected with the help of a competent jury. Such exhibitions with a captious and qualified selection are an important condition for the development of art: if only customers judged art, then art would never rise above similar portraits, sugary landscapes and ideologically consistent altar paintings. Maintaining a high professional level and served salons. The works selected by the jury, no matter how academic and "saloon" they were, had one important advantage - they were masterful, professional works. And a talented amateur could develop, having the level of these salons as a tuning fork for his activity. The production of "geniuses" requires an environment of strong mediocrity professionals.

Becoming an academician and receiving profitable regular orders, Chardin improved in once and for all chosen genres. He paints still lifes, in which, achieving pictorial perfection, he moves from early polysyllabic compositions to increasingly simple, modest productions of three to five of the most common objects that he moves from still life to still life - a glass, a crooked bottle of dark glass, a copper mortar , a clay bowl, sometimes a porcelain jug appears; to the utensils he adds a bunch of grapes and a broken pomegranate, and more often an apple, a potato, an onion, a couple of eggs, a fly and a cockroach, regulars in kitchen interiors. The simpler the staging of the most ordinary objects, the more difficult the painting and composition become. A composition is not a production, you can put on the most luxurious objects, the most complex architectural decorations and the most beautiful and numerous sitters in various and expensive costumes, and the composition from this luxurious production can turn out to be primitive, banal, boring, and rather not complicated, but crackling. On the contrary, with the most modest set of objects, the composition, like painting, can be the most complex and perfect. Composition is not an arrangement, as this Latin term is sometimes inaccurately understood and translated, but “juxtaposition”, that is, correlation, establishing links in a work between its elements, achieving unity and harmony of parts.

But it cannot be said that simple objects are meager material for a painter. You can travel around the globe, or you can travel along the surface of an apple; you can look at the astronomical worlds through a telescope, or you can look at a plant cell through a microscope and in both cases make discoveries, create scientific theories that are significant in some way. So it is in art. Not naturalism reaches Chardin; yes, he strives for illusion, peering into a lopsided copper tank, but something more is obtained - picturesque, and plastic richness, a perfect language of painting is developed. Many painters came to their success thanks to interesting plots, and one can understand their work only by raking these external layers, looking for encrypted subtext. Chardin, on the other hand, due to his “ignorance”, initially immediately and forever refuses “interesting plots”, and painting itself remains the most interesting plot for him. This is one of the most "pure" painters in the history of art. Other similar can be called unless Cezanne.

“Who told you that they write with paints? They write with feelings, but they only use paints! - such an exclamation of Chardin is known. Not trusting reasoning about art and school rules, Chardin prefers to rely on intuition, trust the artist's intelligent eye, feel into the subject of the image and write when all the forces of the soul are at the tip of the brush. Chardin did not formulate theories, did not try to express in words the features of his creative method. He was above all the theories of his day, the rantings of the Rubensists and Poussinists. He understood how difficult it was to achieve a worthy artistic result, and did not waste time talking.

The strict and spiritual way of life of skilled artisans, which underlies both the personality and art of Chardin, was also the subject of his images. He created a number of genre paintings built in the same way as a still life - interior scenes: a meal, children's games, cooking, washing clothes, mother and children. Chardin was happily married. When his first wife died, after ten years of widowhood, he married an elderly rich lady who honored her husband, a worker and worthy person, respected by all, and surrounded his old age with care and attention. Chardin strictly followed the way of life that his father, a carpenter, his grandfather, a craftsman, and all this class adhered to. He lived comfortably, in abundance, without external brilliance, to which wealthy fashionable artists sometimes aspired, imitating the aristocratic characters of their portraits.

Characteristic is the name of one of Chardin's genre paintings - "Prayer before dinner": a mother teaches children to thank God before a meal and remember that man does not live by bread alone.

"Laundress" is one of the masterpieces of Chardin, the artist is generally very even, in almost every work he achieved a high artistic result. But this picture is still very good. In a semi-dark room - the utility room of the dwelling of an average Parisian, a maid washes in a trough, and a baby sits on the floor and is engaged in an exciting business - he blows soap bubbles with concentration. A woman busy with laundry looks at the little one with pleasure and approval, looking after him. In the dark depths - an ajar door to another, bright room, where washing is also taking place; golden light "envelops" the figure of the washerwoman standing there, the stool and the trough.

To tell only the plot is to say nothing or almost nothing about Chardin. How classically balanced objects are distributed - as in a still life on the table, pots and bowls, so on the floor of the room there are figures and pieces of furniture; how the light snatches from the dark depth only that which gives the composition an additional organizing principle; as a color that gives a local color to objects and a color characteristic to lighting, forms a color system with the penetration of primary and secondary colors everywhere; how the illusion of the texture of wood, fabrics of different varieties, body surface is created - and at the same time a well-thought-out, clearly organized color system is built.

If we compare the still lifes and everyday painting of Chardin with the Dutch and Flemish paintings of the 17th century, where entire armies of artists specialized in these genres and, competing and competing, achieved brilliance and perfection in them, it turns out that the modest Chardin next to them is more complex and convincing than the Dutch with all their jewelery goblets and Delft faience, an abundance of exotic fruits, game and strange sea fish, they look more sketchy and poorer than Chardin's colorful symphonies written about some unpeeled potato.

With regard to Chardin, it is a stretch to compare his ideas with the statements and theories of the Enlightenment philosophers. He is, as it were, programmatically "anti-intellectual", emphasizes his lack of education and eschews all sorts of theories. But his deep connection with the culture of the Enlightenment is in his creative method, which he formulated with a brush, and not with words. And when you compare his work with the idols of intellectual life of the 18th century, the French encyclopedists and enlighteners, Chardin's work seems no less significant, deep and intellectual than the works of the philosophers and writers Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau.

"Unlearned" Chardin is one of the pinnacles of the great French culture of the Enlightenment.