Still Life with Teapot, Grapes, Chestnuts, and a Pear

Chardin celebrated the commonplace. His still lifes feature an air of informality and intimacy, as if he were working in his kitchen rather than his studio. In fact, inventories reveal that he owned most of the objects that he painted so meticulously, balancing form and texture. He also loved the pure, sensuous quality of paint, as the patch of brilliant orange brushed on the pear attests. The critic Denis Diderot enthused: “O Chardin! It’s not white, red, or black pigment that you crush on your palette: it’s the very substance of the objects, it’s air and light that you take up with the tip of your brush and fix onto the canvas.”