Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin

“We have learned from Chardin that a pear is as living as a woman, that an ordinary piece of pottery is as beautiful as a precious stone,” wrote novelist Marcel Proust. Certainly, Chardin is still thought of as a master of the still life and, during his lifetime, his work (which was enormously popular at the Paris Salon exhibitions) helped to elevate this category of painting. Born in 1699, the son of a carpenter, Chardin was admitted to the French Academy as a painter of “animals and fruits”. He turned to genre painting in the 1930s—depicting scenes of domestic life and virtue—before returning to still lives towards the end of his career.