Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin Giclée Fine Art Prints

Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) built his career as a painter in Paris, between the Rue de Seine, where he was born, and the Louvre, which he inhabited for the last two decades of his life. He mastered his craft in various studios and, at the age of twenty-eight, presented two paintings, "Scat Fish" and "Buffet", with which he was admitted to the bosom of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. "Scat Fish" evoked universal admiration and at first opened the doors of the prestigious institution to him. He soon established himself as the most outstanding still-life master of his age. Slowly and painstakingly, he composed small canvases in which the world without a history of objects, of household utensils, was arranged and depicted with care and diligence.

Around 1730, in the spirit of the 17th-century Dutch tradition, he began to paint genre scenes that illustrate the intimacy and everyday life of his domestic universe. These small exquisite masterpieces were highly appreciated in Paris and in the European royal courts. In 1751, Louis XV commissioned him to paint "A Music Box for Teaching Canaries," in which a young woman teaches her canary to sing. This was one of his last domestic works. Chardin, "the painter of silent life", returned to the genre he so loved, the still life.

At the age of seventy, he created self-portraits in pastel in which a subtle psychology shines through. He died surrounded by the indifference of an audience that gave its preference to the more easily digestible art of a Jean-Baptiste Greuze or Joseph Vernet.