The food and kitchen utensils in this painting appears casually arranged. This display is, however, based on carefully calculated visual relationships. In Still Life with Cooking Utensils, the visual weight of the white cloth that spills over the ledge is matched by the similar disposition of the green onions. The handle of the water jug counters the emphatic circular sweep of the kettle, whose hollowness adds depth to the arrangement. The scenes betoken an intimate domesticity, a place of blessing related to the fundaments of human life.
Chardin’s contemporaries recognized that his method of applying paint and color was unique and unprecedented. Denis Diderot, an Enlightenment philosopher and art writer, said of Chardin in a 1765 Salon review, “it is the air and light you take with the tip of your brush and fix to your canvas… [your work] exists between nature and art.” Chardin’s skill at imparting the haptic, or tactile, qualities of motionless objects through the steady emphasis of his brush, rather than a faithful reproduction of the details, promotes a sense of quiet harmony.
Details
- Artist Name: Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779)
- Title: Still Life with Cooking Utensils
- Date: c. 1728-30
- Medium: Oil on canvas (one of a pair)
- Dimensions: 15-3/4 x 12-3/8 in. (40.0 x 31.4 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1969.38.03.1.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Private Collection, London (Leon Michel-Levy?)
[Georges Wildenstein collection, Schloss Moyre bei Colombiers by 1921];
Hermann Goering;
Recovered by Allied Forces, where they were recorded as nos. 7392 and 7393 at the Munich Central Collecting Point, returned to;
[Wildenstein collection];
[Wildenstein Galleries, New York, sold 8 June 1957 to];
Robert Ellis Simon, Los Angeles, gift to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Exposition des ouvres de J.B.S. Chardin
- Paris, Galerie Pigalle, 1929 to
Loan Exhibition of Eighteenth Century French Art
- Fogg Art Museum, 1931-02-16 to 1931-03-09
Gastronomy in Fine Arts
- New York, The French Embassy, 1951-11-29 to 1952-01-30
Masterpieces of Painting Through Six Centuries
- Houston, Allied Arts Association, 1952-11-16 to 1952-11-27
Eighteenth Century Masterpieces
- Palm Beach, Society of the Four Arts, 1952-12-12 to 1953-01-04
California Collects: North and South
- Los Angeles, University of California Los Angeles, 1958-01-20 to 1958-02-23
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1958-03-07 to 1958-04-06
[on loan]
- Henry Art Gallery, 1981-02-12 to
Paintings by J.-B. S. Chardin
- Wildenstein & Co. (New York, N.Y.), 1926-11 to
French Masters: Rococo to Romanticism. An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings & Prints
- Los Angeles, University of California, Art Galleries, 1961-03-05 to 1961-04-18
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and The Norton Simon Foundation_1
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1973-05-03 to 1976-06-15
All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food
- Norton Simon Museum, 2023-04-14 to 2023-08-14
Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life
- Norton Simon Museum, 2012-07-20 to 2013-01-21
Reinstallation of Galleries: Art History of the 17th and 18th Century Gains Fresh Dimension
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-09-02 to 1995-08-13
- Furst, H., Apollo, fig. VI p. 32
- Furst, H., The Connoisseur, p. 16
- Wildenstein, Daniel, Chardin, nos. 62, 63, figs. 29, 30
- Conisbee, Philip, Chardin, pp. 90-91
- Goldstein, N., Design and Composition, p. 209
- Goncourt, E.; and J. Goncourt, L'art du XVIIIe siècle, 1906, p. 187
- Guiffrey, J., J.B.S. Chardin, 1926, nos. 10, 11
- Martin, K., Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, 1951, figs. 1, 2 pp. 20-22
- Martin, K., Fetschrift Kurt Bauch, 1957, no. 9 pp. 240, 243
- Stechow, W., Catalogue of European and American Paintings and Sculpture in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, 1967, p. 33
- Morse, John D., Old Master Paintings in North America, 1979, p. 47
- Rosenberg, Pierre, Chardin: 1699-1779, 1979, pp. 160-163
- Elsen, A., Purposes of Art, 1981,
- Russell, S., Art in the World, 1983, repr. , no. 279 p. 218
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 92
- Wildenstein, George, Chardin, 1999, nos. 933, 943, pl. XCII, figs. 127, 128
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 61A p. 251
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