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An orange and the bodies of a large fowl and two rabbits on a brown ledge nearly span the width of this square still life painting. The face of the ledge takes up the bottom quarter of the composition. Near the left edge of the canvas, the orange has a stem with dark green leaves. Next to it, near the center of the composition, the bird lies face up with its sapphire-blue head and neck draped down backward over the face of the ledge. The rest of its body is rust red, gray, and brown, and its tail feathers are angled up toward the top right corner of the canvas. The two rabbits have silver-grey fur tinged with muted golden yellow. They lie, one atop the other, to our right of the fowl. Their eyes are closed, and a drop of dark red blood drips from the mouth of the rabbit underneath. The ledge is caramel brown, and the wall behind is mottled with ginger brown and putty grey. The artist signed the lower left, “chardin.”

Still Life with Game, probably 1750s

Jean Siméon Chardin

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 53

Chardin presents the bounty of a successful hunt with brute realism and immediacy. The bold brushstrokes convey the hares’ soft fur, the sticky, congealed blood, and the pheasant’s prickly feathers. Critics in the 1700s marveled at the way Chardin could use paint to capture not only how things appear but also their weight and physical presence. Unlike many artists of his time, Chardin does not show the animals ready to be cooked or displayed on expensive platters as tokens of wealth and status. They seem to exist in a placeless world, out of time. Chardin’s painting confronts us with the basic facts of life — and death.

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 49.6 x 59.4 cm (19 1/2 x 23 3/8 in.)

framed: 72.2 x 82.1 x 8.3 cm (28 7/16 x 32 5/16 x 3 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1952.5.36

Artists / Makers

Jean Siméon Chardin (painter) French, 1699 - 1779

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Detail Information

Inscription

lower left in brown paint: chardin. / [illegible date]

Provenance

Possibly (Wildenstein & Co., Paris, New York, and London);[1] David David-Weill [1871-1952], Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, by 1925;[2] purchased February/March 1937 with the David-Weill collection by (Wildenstein & Co., Paris, New York, and London);[3] sold 1946 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1952 to NGA.

[1] Eisler 1977: 314 indicates that David-Weill acquired the painting from Wildenstein, whose Paris office no longer has records to confirm this transaction (see letter from Ay-Whang Hsia to David Rust, 8 August 1978, in NGA curatorial files).

[2] The painting appears in the background of a portrait of David-Weill painted by Edouard Vuillard in 1925, and was catalogued in the David-Weill collection by Georges Henriot in 1926.

[3] "Sale of the David-Weill Collection." Art News 35 (27 February 1937): 12 and "David-Weill Pictures Come to New York." Art Digest 12 (1 November 1937): 13. David-Weill, head of Lazard Frère Bank and Chairman of the Conseil des Musées de France, had an extraordinary collection of art which was dispersed in several ways during the World War II era. Some of the collection was consigned to Wildenstein's in London, who in turn sent some of the paintings, including this Chardin, to their New York branch where they were exhibited in 1937. Despite complications of nationality during the war, David-Weill managed to ship a large part of the collection via Lisbon to New York. Unfortunately another portion of the collection, which had been safeguarded in Sourches by French museum administration officials, was confiscated by the Nazis in July 1941. Much of the collection was recovered and processed through the Munich Central Collecting Point after the war by the Allies.

[4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2017.

Associated Names

David-Weill, David
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

Exhibition History

1937: Paintings from the David-Weill Collection, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 1937, no. 5, as Nature Morte.

1939: The Great Tradition of French Painting, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 1939, no. 18, as The Pheasant.

1979: Chardin 1699-1779, Grand Palais, Paris; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1979, no. 99, repro.

1999: Chardin, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf; Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1999-2000, no. 71, repro., as Two Rabbits, a Pheasant and a Seville Orange on a Stone Ledge.

2002: Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art; The Frick Collection, New York, 2002-2003, no. B, pl. 82 (shown only in Washington and Dallas).

Bibliography

1926: Henriot, Gabriel. Collection David-Weill. 3 vols. Paris, 1926-1928: I: opp. 43, repro.

1931: Pascal, André, and Roger Gaucheron. Documents sur la vie et l'oeuvre de Chardin. Paris, 1931: 152.

1933: Wildenstein, Georges. Chardin. Paris, 1933: 210, no. 714, pl. 65, fig. 83.

1937: "David-Weill Pictures Come to New York." Art Digest 12 (1 November 1937): 13.

1948: Wildenstein and Company. French XVIII Century Paintings. New York, 1948: opp. table of contents.

1951: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 228, no. 102, repro., as Still Life.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 353, repro., as Still Life.

1963: Rosenberg, Pierre. Chardin: Biographical and Critical Study. Translated by Helga Harrison. Lausanne, 1963: 73, 75, 86, repro.

1963: Wildenstein, Georges. Chardin. Zurich, 1963: 140, no. 30, pl. 1, color repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 26, as Still Life.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 19, repro.

1969: Wildenstein, Georges. Chardin: catalogue raisonné. Revised by Daniel Wildenstein; translated by Stuart Gilbert. Oxford, 1969: 147, no. 30, pl. 1, color repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 66, repro., as Still Life.

1975: Paulson, Ronald. Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century. London, 1975: 105.

1976: Faré, Michel, and Fabrice Faré. La vie silencieuse en France: la nature morte au XVIIIe siècle. Fribourg, 1976: 151, fig. 232.

1977: Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 314-315, fig. 277.

1983: Rosenberg, Pierre. L'opera completa di Chardin. Milan, 1983: no. 138, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 323, no. 428, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 86, repro.

1986: Conisbee, Philip. Chardin. Oxford, 1986: 189, pl. 185, detail pl. 184.

1993: Held, Jutta, and Norbert Schneider. Sozialgeschichte der Malerei vom Spätmittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Cologne, 1993: repro. 327.

1994: Roland Michel, Marianne. Chardin. Paris, 1994: 134-137, 143 n. 18, 187 n. 19, color repro. 136.

1999: Rosenberg, Pierre, and Renaud Temperini. Chardin. Paris, 1999: 124, 126, 263, no.139.

2003: Salomon, Antoine, and Guy Cogeval. Vuillard, The Inexhaustible Glance: Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels. 3 vols. Milan and Paris, 2003: 3:1424, no. II-229.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 250, no. 200, color repro.

2005: Baillio, Joseph, et al. The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier. A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein's Presence in New York. Exh. cat. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 2005: 58, fig. 50, 73 (not in the exhibition).

2009: Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 17, 89-91, color repro.