Achievement: Chardin, Jean Baptiste Siméon (Paris (75), November 2, 1699 - December 6, 1779) (Designer)
Self-portrait with bezicles
Self-portrait with bezicles
Production: 1773
Theme: Pastel
Technique(s): laid paper (pastel)
Dimensions: H. 45.5 cm; W. 38 cm
Inventory no.: 91.5.1
Photo credit(s) :
Lauginie, François
Cartel
A student of Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicolas Coypel, Chardin was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1724. Four years later, The Stingray and Le Buffet (Paris, Musée du Louvre) opened the doors of the Académie Royale to him as a painter "in the talent of animals and fruit", the least considered genre in the hierarchy of genres. His still lifes and genre scenes nonetheless won him immense success with Parisian and European clients. This specialty did not prevent him from acquiring an important position at the Académie, where he became treasurer and upholsterer, placing the works of his fellow artists at the Salons de l'Académie royale held every two years in the Louvre. A close friend of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, he decided to make fun of Perronneau by hanging his portraits of provincials - including the marvelous Lenormand du Coudray (Paris, Musée Cognacq-Jay) - next to the Court figures painted by his friend at the 1769 Salon.
Chardin was no less than 70 years old when he took up pastel to compensate for his health problems, which deprived him of most of the use of his eyes, damaged by decades of grinding pigments.
"My infirmities have prevented me from painting in oils; I have turned to pastels," he wrote in 1777 to the Comte d'Angivillier. From 1771 to 1779, all he exhibited at each Salon du Louvre were study heads in pastel, whose bold, skilful color the critics admired. Abbé Raynal, one of Chardin's contemporaries, observed: "His way of painting is singular: he places the colors one after the other, almost without mixing them, so that his work resembles a mosaic, like the needlepoint tapestry we call point-carré".
His technique, based on bold cross-hatching that breaks down the chromatic spectrum, is a far cry from the velvety quality favored by La Tour, and is reminiscent of Perronneau, whom he had mocked a few years earlier. His own face remained a source of exploration in the final years of his career.
This self-portrait, painted two years after the first one he exhibited at the Salon of 1771, was seized in customs and acquired with the help of the French State in 1991, the year in which the policy of enriching the pastel cabinet enabled several major acquisitions.
Provenance
Angers, collection of Pierre Louis Eveillard de Livois (1736-1790).
Collection of Mademoiselle de La Marsaulaye, perhaps a pupil of Chardin.
Gift of the latter to the Vicomte de Rochebouët.
Clermont-Ferrand, private collection.
Public sale (Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, May 22 1919, lot 99), 1919.
Purchased at public auction by Jan Woodner (1903-1990) (Clermont-Ferrand, 1986), 1986.
Export license refused to Jan Woodner.
Pre-empted at public sale by the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans [same sale].
Administrative court ruling in favor of Jan Woodner, 1988.
Appeal to the Conseil d'Etat: acquisition granted to the Musée d'Orléans by decree, 1990.
Purchase with the participation of the Fonds du Patrimoine and the FRAM, 1991.
School
France
Location
Museum of Fine Arts
1st floor
Room: Cabinet des pastels