Chardin
(Marianne Roland Michel, Eithne McCarthy (Translator))
First published in France in 1994, Chardin expands on the work of Georges Wildenstein in the 1933 book, Chardin, and Pierre Rosenberg's catalog for the great Chardin exhibition of 1979. Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin was largely a self-taught painter who took the Academy of Painting by storm in 1728 despite the lowly status enjoyed by most still-life painters in his day. Though he rescued the academy's finances and won great artistic influence, he was never allowed to teach and was denied the academy's higher honors because he was a "painter of animals and fruit." Even so, for 20 years he performed the important task of hanging salon exhibits. Chardin examines the painter's career through his paintings and the writings of his contemporaries.
Chardin
(Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, Pierre Rosenberg, Galeries Nationales
)
Pierre Rosenberg, the Chardin scholar and President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, had one overriding goal in mind when assembling the exhibition of which Chardin is the catalog: "to present the artist's finest paintings, the most perfect, the most harmonious, the paintings that leave nothing to be desired." The 99 paintings reproduced in this book are a testimony to the success of that endeavor. There are also six essays by Chardin experts and an extensively researched chronology.
Chardin : An Intimate Art
(Helene Prigent, Pierre Rosenberg)
Charming yet scholarly, this book explores the work of the French artist Jean Baptiste Simon Chardin, who brought a breath of fresh air to 18th-century painting. His masterful sense of color and light filled his simple domestic interiors and delicate renderings of still lifes with a profound humanism. A major Chardin exhibition opens in June 2000 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.