The Man with the Red Crayon

Abstract

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s biography is a collection of fragments, a life cobbled together from official documents, observations and stories told by friends, and contemporary critiques of his work. As far as I know, there are no extant letters by Chardin, no journal, no intimate record of any kind. The bones of his life are interesting anyway, as much for what is missing as for what is known. The artist was born in 1699 in Paris, a city he never left. His father was a craftsman who specialized in the design and construction of billiard tables. Chardin was not trained at the Royal Academy of Painting but at the less prestigious Academy of Saint Luke. Nevertheless, in 1728, he gained admission to the Royal Academy as “a painter skilled in animals and fruit.” He married the twenty-two-year-old Marguerite Saintard at Saint Sulpice in January of 1731, and ten months later they baptized their son, Jean Pierre. Two years after that, their daughter, Marguerite Agnes, was born. In 1735, Chardin’s twenty-six-year-old wife died, and then, either in 1736 or 1737, his small daughter died as well. Chardin exhibited regularly at the Salons, and in November of 1740 was presented to Louis XV at Versailles and gave him two pictures—Saying Grace and The Diligent Mother. In 1744, he married a widow of comfortable circumstances, Françoise Marguerite Pouget. By 1754, Chardin had received his first royal pension and his son had won the Academy’s Grand Prix competition.