Pierre Rosenberg, the Chardin scholar and President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, had one overriding goal in mind when assembling the exhibition of which Chardin is the catalog: "to present the artist's finest paintings, the most perfect, the most harmonious, the paintings that leave nothing to be desired." The 99 paintings reproduced in this book are a testimony to the success of that endeavor. There are also six essays by Chardin experts and an extensively researched chronology.

Chardin's still lifes and genre scenes have been deeply appreciated for centuries for what Rosenberg calls "the grave, silent quality that encourages the onlooker to silent reverie." He is incapable of untruth: his subjects--jugs and bowls, glasses, cherries, housemaids, boys at play, dogs and cats--are painted without a touch of irony, embellishment, or drama.

It is painful to report that this volume is extremely disappointing visually, with plates that are either poorly reproduced or reproduced from poor transparencies and are slightly greenish or washed out. Except for details, which do show Chardin's close harmonies and painterly touch, the pictures look flat and dull. Art historians, of course, will see the paintings in the flesh and use this book as only an aide-memoire, but for ordinary, nonprofessional art lovers, the 20-year-old catalog of the great 1979 Chardin exhibition gives a far better sense of the quiet perfection of this subtle artist. Even a pocket book from Abrams' Discoveries series, Chardin: An Intimate Art, by Helene Prigent and Pierre Rosenberg, is far superior. Although its reproductions are minuscule by comparison, they are at least clear and clean, with colors that appear to be close to those of the original works. The little book may be only an hors d'oeuvre, but it has all the flavor that is missing in the full-course meal. --Peggy Moorman


From Publishers Weekly
Rosenberg's concise pk analysis of the 18th-century Parisian painter Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, known predominantly for his harmonious still lifes, is appreciative yet fair-minded. Chardin, born in 1699, apprenticed at the studios of the artists Cazes and Coypel, beginning in 1718. Admitted to the Royal Academy in 1728 on the basis of his highly regarded still lifes The Skate and The Sideboard , the painter owed little, according to Rosenberg, to the Academy's "official precepts," showing "small inclination to be trained as one of those painters of historical scenes then considered to be the only real artists." The author touches upon Chardin's "special contribution" to the genre of still life--"a subtle interplay of light and shade, a softening of the outlines," and the famous "thick and clotted brushwork"--and examines the painter's "incapacity to paint from the imagination,"p. 47 relying instead on keeping his subject right before his eyes. Rosenberg's informative text is accompanied by handsome illustrations of Chardin's work, including many of his figure paintings. The author also includes critical comments from artists and writers, such as Diderot, van Gogh and Malraux. Rosenberg ( Laurent de la Hyre ) is head curator of the Department of Painting for the Louvre. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This catalog of the paintings of the beloved 18th-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Sim on Chardin accompanies an exhibition already seen in Paris, Dusseldorf, and London and just arriving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. As a whole, this volume provides a comprehensive evaluation of the work of the artist. Rosenberg, the director of the Louvre and a noted expert on Chardin who curated the exhibition, contributes the preface and lead essay preceding contributions by six other curators and academics. Scholarly discussions include the sources for the different kinds of glass and porcelain used in Chardin's still lifes, the modern and subversive nature of the artist's subject matter, and the prints made after Chardin's paintings. A particularly excellent essay is that of Colin B. Bailey, chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada, who in clear and lucid writing examines how the methodologies of the new art history have elucidated our understanding of the artist and his relation to 18th-century culture. In the catalog section, beautiful plates are accompanied by detailed entries. Highly recommended for both academic and art libraries as well as for general book collections.DSandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Coll. Lib., MA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review
"Not the least of Rosenberg's virtues as a humane and attentive guide is his generous quoting of other voices."


Book Description
Jean Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) started his career with a great interest in still life, a subject held in particularly low regard by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. According to the Academy, the most important paintings contained human figures (most highly ranked were mythological or historical subjects) and paintings with no human figures were at the bottom of the hierarchy. As the Academy exerted an enormous influence, truly making or breaking an artist's career. Aware of this hierarchy, Chardin began including figures in his work in about 1730, mainly women and children. These scenes of domestic interiors were unprecedented because Chardin gave them a greater intensity and intimacy than the usual lighthearted depiction of everyday life. Chardin's technique also set him apart from his contemporaries, as he did not prepare for a painting by doing many drawings or studies, but rather started right on the canvas itself. Diderot once called Chardin the 'great magician' because of the way he united color, composition and subject. With 100 colour illustrations of Chardin's work and six essays by leading experts in the field, the book will discuss his biography, his use of ceramics and glass and the complex history of engravings of his paintings.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French


From the Publisher
The first fruits of Pierre Rosenberg's research were published in 1979 to great acclaim. This new work extends the boundaries of Chardin scholarship with new findings relating to the artist's life and the chronology of his oeuvre. Turning his back on the world of his contemporaries Fragonard and Boucher and evading easy but erroneous comparison with Flemish painters of interiors, Chardin gradually focused more and more on the spaces between objects rather than the objects themselves. As the details in his still life compositions shrink away, Chardin emerges as "the painter of pure painting" and the precursor of many artists a century or more later. Authoritative texts by Pierre Rosenberg and Renaud Temperini reveal Chardin's world, illuminated by his life, friends, and colleagues, and above all by the audience for whom he produced some of the most popular works of the eighteenth century.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This book is the catalogue of an international exhibition of Chardin's work, timed to coincide with both the twentieth anniversary of the great 1979 Chardin exhibition and the tercentenary of the painter's birth. Beginning at the Grand Palais in Paris, the exhibition travels to the Kunstmuseum im Ehrenhof in Dusseldorf, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Rosenberg's concise pk analysis of the 18th-century Parisian painter Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, known predominantly for his harmonious still lifes, is appreciative yet fair-minded. Chardin, born in 1699, apprenticed at the studios of the artists Cazes and Coypel, beginning in 1718. Admitted to the Royal Academy in 1728 on the basis of his highly regarded still lifes The Skate and The Sideboard , the painter owed little, according to Rosenberg, to the Academy's ``official precepts,'' showing ``small inclination to be trained as one of those painters of historical scenes then considered to be the only real artists.'' The author touches upon Chardin's ``special contribution'' to the genre of still life--``a subtle interplay of light and shade, a softening of the outlines,'' and the famous ``thick and clotted brushwork''--and examines the painter's ``incapacity to paint from the imagination,''p. 47 relying instead on keeping his subject right before his eyes. Rosenberg's informative text is accompanied by handsome illustrations of Chardin's work, including many of his figure paintings. The author also includes critical comments from artists and writers, such as Diderot, van Gogh and Malraux. Rosenberg ( Laurent de la Hyre ) is head curator of the Department of Painting for the Louvre. (Aug.)

Library Journal

This catalog of the paintings of the beloved 18th-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Sim on Chardin accompanies an exhibition already seen in Paris, Dusseldorf, and London and just arriving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. As a whole, this volume provides a comprehensive evaluation of the work of the artist. Rosenberg, the director of the Louvre and a noted expert on Chardin who curated the exhibition, contributes the preface and lead essay preceding contributions by six other curators and academics. Scholarly discussions include the sources for the different kinds of glass and porcelain used in Chardin's still lifes, the modern and subversive nature of the artist's subject matter, and the prints made after Chardin's paintings. A particularly excellent essay is that of Colin B. Bailey, chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada, who in clear and lucid writing examines how the methodologies of the new art history have elucidated our understanding of the artist and his relation to 18th-century culture. In the catalog section, beautiful plates are accompanied by detailed entries. Highly recommended for both academic and art libraries as well as for general book collections.--Sandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Coll. Lib., MA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Times Literary Supplement

Neither dark nor light, neither brown nor grey, indistinctly shot with vague directionless flurries of the brush, the upper reaches of the canvas labelled "Bowl of Plums, Peach and Water-Pitcher" offer no resting place for the viewer's attention. Yet this blur is where the paintwork launches out from; the chaos on which Chardin will impose substantial objects.

Working up from that base, he will set down their bodies in thin white tonal washes; tamp these back into the ground with earthy or sooty overlays; regather for another move upward into the light; conceal his traces again, glazing however, with ever more forceful hues, before committing himself to the declamatory flash of impasto. That top-level enactment of textures can be fluid and oily, as for instance in this