ID 1230048
Lot 5 | JEAN SIMÉON CHARDIN (PARIS 1699-1779)
Estimate value
€ 8 000 000 – 12 000 000
Le Melon entamé
signé et daté 'Chardin 1760.' (en bas, au centre)
huile sur toile, ovale
57 x 51,5 cm (22 7/16 x 20 ¼ in.)
Provenance
Collection Jacques Roëttiers de La Tour (1707-1784), orfèvre du roi, de 1761 à 1784 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots) (selon le livret de Salon de 1761, op. cit. infra et son inventaire après décès [Archives Nationales, AN/MC/ET/LVI/299]) ;
Puis par descendance dans la collection de son fils, Alexandre-Louis Roëttiers de Montaleau (1748-1808), orfèvre et médailleur, de 1784 à 1802 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots) (selon le testament de Jacques Roëttiers de La Tour [Archives Nationales, AN/MC/ET/LVI/298]) ;
Vente anonyme [M. Montaleau, Langeac, Senet, Mde [?], Demont, Duchesse, Paillet & Coquelars] ; Maison des Divisions supplémentaires du Mont-de-Piété, rue Vivienne, Paris, 19 juillet 1802 (30 Messidor an 10), lot 25 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots, acquis 21 francs par Guillaume-Jean Constantin [selon les annotations dans les catalogues de vente]) ;
Collection Guillaume-Jean Constantin (1755-1816), membre fondateur de la Société des amis des arts, marchand de tableaux, restaurateur et conservateur de la collection de Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814) au château de Malmaison, de 1802 à 1816 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots) ;
Très probablement acquis de ce dernier ou de son fils, Amédée Constantin (1795-1836), par François Marcille (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots) ;
Collection François Marcille (1790-1856), jusque 1856 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots) ;
Puis par descendance dans la collection de son fils, Camille Marcille (1816-1875), jusque 1875 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots) ;
Sa vente après-décès, hôtel Drouot, Paris, 6-7 mars 1876, (Me Pilllet), lot 16 (acquis 7000 francs par le marchand Stéphane Bourgeois (1838 ou 1839-1899) pour le compte de la baronne Charlotte de Rothschild [selon les Archives de Paris, D48 E3 66]).
Collection baronne Charlotte de Rothschild (1825-1899), veuve du baron Nathaniel de Rothschild (1812-1870), de 1876 à 1899 ;
Puis par descendance dans la collection de son petit-fils, le baron Henri James Nathaniel de Rothschild (1872-1947), de 1899 à 1947 ;
Puis par descendance aux actuels propriétaires.
Literature
E. Bocher, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, coll. Les gravures françaises du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1876, 3e fascicule, p. 97.
P. de Saint-Victor, ‘La collection Marcille’, préface du catalogue de la vente, Paris, 6-7 mars 1876, p. V (voir vente de 1876, op. cit. supra).
G. Duplessis, La collection de M. Camille Marcille, Paris, 1876, p. 7.
J. de Goncourt, E. de Goncourt, L’art du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1881, p. 105 et p. 189 (réédition Paris, 1880, p. 70 et p. 114).
H. de Chennevières, 'Chardin au musée du Louvre', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1er janvier 1889, 3e période, I, p. 125 (erronément repris dans la collection Marcille).
H. de Chennevières, 'Silhouettes de collectionneurs : M. Eudoxe Marcille', La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1er septembre 1890, 3e période, IV, p. 230.
C. Normand, J.-B. Siméon Chardin, coll. Les Artistes Célèbres, Paris, 1901, p. 104.
C. Stryienski, 'Le Salon de 1761 d'après le catalogue illustré par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1er juillet 1903, 3e période, XXX, pp. 67-68 (erronément associé avec le tableau du musée du Louvre, no. inv. MI 1034).
T. Leclère, 'L’exposition Chardin et Fragonard', Le Mercure de France, Paris, 16 août 1907, p. 726.
A. Dayot, J. Guiffrey, J.-B Siméon Chardin avec un catalogue complet de l’œuvre du maître, Paris, 1908, p. 14, p. 43, p. 88, n°204 et p. 93.
E. Pilon, Chardin, coll. Les Maîtres de l’Art, Paris, 1909, p. 168.
E. Dacier, Catalogue de ventes et livrets de Salons illustrés par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. Introduction et notices par Émile Dacier, Paris, 1911, p. 58 (dessin du Melon entamé de Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin dans son exemplaire de livret de Salon), reproduit en noir et blanc (réédition Nogent-le-Roi, 1993, VI, n. p.).
H. E. A. Furst, Chardin, Londres, 1911, p. 129.
D. Quintin, Les Chardin de la Collection Henri de Rothschild, Paris, 1929, reproduit en noir et blanc n. p.
A. Pascal, R. Gaucheron, Documents sur la vie et l’œuvre de Chardin, Paris, 1931, p. 138.
G. Wildenstein, Chardin, coll. L'art français, Paris, 1933, p. 214, n°777, reproduit en noir et blanc pl. LXX, fig. 91.
F. Jourdain, Chardin 1699-1779, Paris, 1949, sous la fig. 53 (reproduit erronément le tableau du musée du Louvre, no. inv. MI 1034).
A. Warnod, 'A la galerie Charpentier : Natures mortes françaises du XVIIe siècle à nos jours', Le Figaro, 18 décembre 1951, p. 11.
C. Valogne, 'Des fruits et des fleurs dans un éclatement de couleurs : La nature morte du XVIIe siècle à nos jours’, Ce Soir, 19 décembre 1951, p. 2.
C. Roger-Marx, 'Natures mortes, hymne à la vie. Une présentation historique à la galerie Charpentier', Le Figaro Littéraire, 22 décembre 1951, 6e année, 296, p. 9, reproduit en noir et blanc.
C. Roland, 'Instantanés parisiens. Natures mortes françaises du XVIIe siècle à nos jours', Lisez-moi bleu, 20 février 1952, 149, p. 332.
J. Barrelet, 'Chardin du point de vue de la verrerie', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, mai-juin 1959, 101e année, VIe période, LIII, p. 308.
A. Caubet, Kunst und Geist Frankreichs im 18. Jahrhunderts, [cat. exp.], Vienne, 1966, p. 27, sous le n°13.
J. Adhémar, 'Lettres adressées aux Goncourt, concernant les Beaux-Arts, conservées à la Bibliothèque nationale', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, novembre 1968, 110e année, VIe période, LXXII, p. 232.
G. Wildenstein, Chardin, édition anglaise revue et complétée par D. Wildenstein, Oxford-Glasgow-Zurich, 1969, pp. 211-213, n°298 (erronément considéré comme différent du sujet analogue dessiné par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin) et n°300 (erronément considéré comme disparu), reproduit en couleurs pl. 43 (réédition Zurich, 1963, pp. 204-205, n°298 [erronément considéré comme différent du sujet analogue dessiné par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin] et n°300 [erronément considéré comme disparu], reproduit en couleurs pl. 43).
M. Faré, F. Faré, La vie silencieuse en France. La nature morte au XVIIIe siècle, Fribourg, 1976, p. 162.
P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Chardin, Paris, 1983, p. 107, n°157, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 107.
P. Conisbee, Chardin, Oxford, 1986, pp. 199-201, reproduit en couleurs pl. 198.
N. Bryson, 'Chardin and the Text of Still life', Critical Inquiry, Winter, 1989, 15, 2, pp. 241-242, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 243, fig. 13.
M. Roland Michel, Chardin, Vanves, 1994, p. 66, p. 76, p. 173 et p. 230.
R. de Leeuw, 'In the light of Chardin: Chardinesque still lifes by Philippe Rousseau and some of his contemporaries', Van Gogh Museum Journal, 1995, p. 114.
J. M. Przyblyski, 'Le Parti Pris des Choses: French Still Life and Modern Painting, 1848-1876', [Doctoral Thesis], University of California, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 27-28.
P. Rosenberg, R. Temperini, Chardin suivi du Catalogue des œuvres, Paris, 1999, pp. 269-270, n°158, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 269.
J. Beechey, 'Chardin: master of structure and texture, harmony and simplicity', The Lancet, 20 mai 2000, CCCLV, 9017, p. 1833.
D. Pety, 'La correspondance des Marcille adressée aux Goncourt', Cahiers Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, 2002, 9, p. 248.
H. W. Paul, 'Collecting Chardins: Charlotte and Henri de Rothschild', The Rothschild Archive. The review of the year April 2004 to March 2005, reproduit en couleurs p. 24.
B. Vieillard, Chardin. Le tact du peintre, le toucher du philosophe, Rennes, 2010, p. 196.
J. Carey, Taking Time. Chardin's Boy building a House of Cards and other paintings, [cat. exp.], Buckinghamshire, 2012, p. 140.
A. Merle du Bourg, Chardin, Paris, 2020, p. 241, p. 244, n°228, reproduit en couleurs p. 246.
H. Lee, 'Eloquent Artifice and Natural Simplicity: Moral Aesthetics of Painting and Eating in Chardin’s Late Food Still Lifes', Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2021, LXXXIV, 1, p. 34.
F. Moens, Collectionneuses Rothschild. Mécènes et donatrices d’exception, [cat. exp.], Liège, 2022-2023, p. 59.
Exhibited
Paris, Louvre, Salon, 1761, n°45 (avec son pendant Le bocal d’abricots - Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin (1724-1780) dessine la paire dans son exemplaire de livret de Salon (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, RESERVE 8-YD2-1132)).
Chartres, Société archéologique d’Eure-et-Loir, Exposition départementale. Industrie. - Antiquités. - Beaux-arts, 1869, n°20.
Paris, galerie Georges Petit, Chardin & Fragonard, 1907, n°43.
Paris, galerie Pigalle, Chardin, octobre 1929, n°34.
Londres, Royal Academy of Arts, French Art, 1932, n°179.
Paris, galerie Charpentier, Natures mortes françaises du XVIIe siècle à nos jours, 1951, n°32.
Rotterdam, musée Boymans, Vier Eeuwen Stilleven in Frankrijk, 10 juillet-20 septembre 1954, n°46.
Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais ; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art ; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Chardin 1699-1779, 29 janvier-30 avril ; 6 juin-12 août ; 18 septembre-19 novembre 1979, n°111.
Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais ; Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum et Kunsthalle ; Londres, Royal Academy of Arts ; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chardin, 7 septembre-22 novembre ; 5 décembre 1999-20 février 2000 ; 9 mars-28 mai 2000 ; 19 juin-17 septembre, n°79.
Ferrare, Palazzo dei Diamanti ; Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, Chardin. Il pittore del silenzio, 17 octobre 2010-30 janvier 2011 ; 28 février-29 mai, n°59.
Further details
JEAN SIMÉON CHARDIN (1699-1779), THE CUT MELON, OIL ON CANVAS, OVAL, SIGNED AND DATED
One of the signal masterpieces of Chardin’s late career, The Cut Melon has for almost two centuries belonged to just two families, the Marcille and the Rothschild dynasties, each of which gathered through succeeding generations the greatest and most celebrated collections of Chardin’s paintings ever assembled. Acquired with its former pendant, The Jar of Apricots (The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto), by François-Martial Marcille (1790-1856) sometime between 1816 and 1836, the pair of pictures passed by descent after François’s death to his son, Camille Marcille (1816-1875), before appearing in Camille’s estate sale in 1876 – remembered as one of the most spectacular auctions of 19th-century Paris. The paintings were acquired at that sale on behalf of Baroness Nathaniel, Charlotte de Rothschild (1825-1899), with both pictures passing by descent through members of the family until 1951, when The Jar of Apricots was sold by Baron James de Rothschild; the present painting remains in the Rothschild family to the present day, its provenance uninterrupted since its creation. Still in a nearly perfect state of preservation, its fame in France in the second half of the 19th century was instrumental in the rehabilitation of Chardin’s reputation, some years before the splendid ensemble of paintings by the artist in the La Caze collection entered the Louvre and made his art widely available to a general public. Exceptionally large in size, monumental in design, elegantly poised yet dynamic in composition, richly colored and executed in dazzling layers of powdery glazing, striking in its mellow and enveloping qualities of light and atmosphere, The Cut Melon displays every facet of Chardin’s virtuoso genius in the final and most accomplished phase of his creative maturity.
Born in Paris in November 1699 to a master cabinetmaker who specialized in billiard tables, Jean-Siméon Chardin studied with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes (1676-1754) and Noël-Nicolas Coypel (1690-1734). He aspired to become a history painter himself and was received as a master painter in 1724 in the Académie de Saint-Luc, the venerable Paris guild that was the principal, if less revered, rival of the Académie Royale. His earliest known works, likely dating from this moment, were ambitious if somewhat clumsy multi-figural genre scenes that functioned as signboards – one for a doctor’s surgery (lost): another, The Game of Billiards (Musée Carnavalet, Paris), which may have served to advertise his own father’s business. Insufficiently trained and awkward in his mastery of figure drawing, Chardin saw little chance of success as a history painter and turned instead to still life, quickly making a name for himself with his depictions of dead game – hares, rabbits, ducks and pheasants – and small, spare kitchen scenes with a glass of wine, a bottle, or a silver goblet, and fruit – plums, Seville oranges, apricots and peaches. A rare opportunity to display his paintings to the public offered itself with the Exposition de la Jeunesse held at the Place Dauphine, an annual open-air exhibition to which he contributed a dozen paintings in 1728. Among these was The Ray-Fish (1728; Louvre), which attracted wide and favorable attention. Fewer than four months later, and certainly owing to his success at the Exposition, Chardin was simultaneously approved and received on the same day (25 September 1728) into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, submitting his Ray-Fish and The Buffet (1728; Louvre) as reception pieces. Despite his lack of academic training, Chardin entered the Académie as a painter ‘skilled in animals and fruit’ and flourished in this category, with little expansion of his repertory for the next five years.
Having established himself as one of the leading still-life painters in France by the early 1730s, Chardin seems to have taken stock of his position and concluded that extending the range of his subject matter might also enlarge the market for his work. Early ambitions now bolstered by a decade of practical experience, Chardin again took up figure painting around 1733, encouraged by friends such as the portrait painter Jacques-André-Joseph Aved (1702-1766), who had chided Chardin that painting the human figure was considerably more challenging than ‘painting cakes and sausages’. Chardin’s devoted friend, the draftsman and printmaker Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790), recounted Aved’s friendly rebuke, adding that Chardin was “offended by this, but controlled himself and gave no sign of his feelings. The next day, however, he began a figural painting of a maidservant drawing water from a water urn.”
Although Chardin probably never completely abandoned still-life painting, from around 1733 or 1734 until the end of the 1740s, he turned his attentions almost entirely to painting domestic genre scenes. Only two still lifes are known from these 15 years and his contributions to the annual Salons in this period – an excellent measure of his production, as he exhibited at almost every Salon from 1737 until 1779, the year of his death – include 46 genre scenes and no still lifes. His genre scenes usually center around one or two figures – a washerwoman, kitchen maid, mother or governess with her charge, child playing games – and include many of the artist’s most acclaimed and beloved works: The Water Urn (Salon of 1737; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), The Young Draftsman and its pendant, The Embroiderer (Salon of 1738; both, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), The Governess and The Return from the Market (Salon of 1739; both, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), The Schoolmistress (Salon of 1740; National Gallery, London), Saying Grace (Salon of 1740; Louvre, Paris) and The Bird-Song Organ (Salon of 1751; Louvre, Paris), among others. Most of these compositions were reproduced and popularized in engravings and exist in other autograph versions, often in several nearly exact replicas from Chardin’s hand. Chardin was often cited by contemporaries as working very slowly and methodically. When he eventually arrived at a final composition that satisfied him, he was happy to repeat it for patrons eager to acquire his work. This was especially true with his genre scenes, but not uncommon even with his still lifes of the 1730s: A Leg of Mutton (dated 1730) in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, for example, exists in four other fine versions.
In much the way he had turned away from still life to figure painting in the later 1730s and 1740s, Chardin returned to painting still life in the 1750s and 1760s, when he largely gave up painting the domestic scenes that had brought him such acclaim in the Salons. The reasons for this shift back to the subject matter that first brought him fame is unknown. Middle-aged, recipient of several royal pensions, and financially secure following a second marriage to a wealthy widow, Chardin devoted more of his time and attention to his increased duties at the Académie, which elected him Treasurer in 1755 and put him in charge of hanging and installing the annual Salons. Inventing original genre compositions seems to have been a more laborious undertaking for Chardin than the creation of still lifes, despite the exceptional care he invested in his meticulous arrangements of fruit, foods and tableware. In the last few Salons in which he exhibited genre scenes, they were either older works that he showed once again or repetitions (with small variations) of compositions he had invented a decade or two earlier. Meanwhile, he exhibited ever larger numbers of still life paintings annually – four in 1757, seven in 1759, and at least that many in 1761.
The Cut Melon and its former pendant, The Jar of Apricots (The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto) were among Chardin’s submissions to the Paris Salon of 1761, created and exhibited as a pair and catalogued in the livret as “no. 45. Deux Tableaux de forme ovale” and identified as “Ils appartienment à M. Roettiers, Orfévre du Roi.” Curiously, not a single Salon critic commented on the pictures, despite their exceptional quality, instead focusing their attention – harshly critical in most cases – on Chardin’s recent variant repetition of Saying Grace, the original version of which the artist had first exhibited 21 years earlier. Notwithstanding the absence of commentary, the present painting and its pendant can be identified as the exhibited paintings by the crucial fact they are noted to be ‘de forme ovale’ – a format that Chardin seems never to have employed previously, and only once or twice subsequently. Fortunately, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin took careful notice of the paintings and sketched them, in their frames, in the margins of his copy of the Salon catalogue (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), confirming that The Cut Melon and The Jar of Apricots were, indeed, the ‘deux tableaux de forme ovale’ exhibited that year. (Saint-Aubin drew his initial sketches rapidly in black chalk in front of the paintings, then went over them in ink at a later time, as was his method. In doing so, he captured the composition as a whole but sometimes confused some small details, as was the case here, which led Georges Wildenstein to erroneously question whether the present picture and its companion were, in fact, the Salon pictures, an uncertainty that that has long been put to rest.) Chardin – who, after all, was tasked with hanging the exhibition – gave the two paintings pride of place. To that same Salon he also submitted another masterpiece, the famous Basket of Wild Strawberries (recently acquired by public subscription for the Louvre), which was catalogued under the heading ‘no. 46. Other Paintings, of the same type, under the same number’. Indeed, it too went unmentioned by the critics, and if Saint-Aubin had not also sketched it in his catalogue, its presence in the Salon would have been lost to history.
The Cut Melon is signed and dated ‘1760’. (Its pendant preceded it by 2 years, and is signed and dated ‘1758’.) On a marble tabletop, Chardin has arranged two pears, three plums, a reed basket of peaches (six evident to the viewer), and a cantaloupe that has been cut open, a large slice of which balances on its open cut. On the far left are two corked bottles of liqueur, and on the right side of the composition is a white water pitcher with pink and blue decorations and its bowl. The unusual oval-shaped canvas seems to dictate the fullness and amplitude of every element of the composition: everything in the picture is round. Each piece of full and fleshy fruit rests and balances against another piece; the two bottles on the left and the pitcher on the right, whose solid vertical forms enclose the sides of the picture, nevertheless bulge and curve at bottom, the pitcher sitting in a low round basin; even the marble table curves along its edge.
Several motifs employed by Chardin in The Cut Melon were favorites that are often found in his still lifes from the mid-1720s and 1730s. A basket of ripe peaches appears in many of his earliest still lifes, such as The Buffet (1728, Louvre, Paris) and Basket of Peaches, with a Pitcher and Glass of Water (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Groupings of two or three pears or plums are included in paintings in the Louvre, The Saint Louis Museum of Art, The Philips Collection in Washington and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, all certainly painted before 1730. Paintings with bottles of wine or liqueurs are too numerous to single out, as are those with water pitchers – often made of rustic earthenware, and far less elegant than the white Chantilly porcelain ewer with polychrome floral decorations and silver gilt mounts in the present painting. However, Chardin’s manner of rendering these objects in his early works was markedly different than in The Cut Melon or other works of his late career. The early still lifes are freely painted, with a vigorous and bold touch, keenly observed and executed with unerring accuracy, but in broad, unblended brushstrokes. His compositions were meticulously planned in order to create an effect of utter simplicity, and he arranged the objects he painted in perfect but often precarious balance on tabletops or ledges that tipped or tilted within the rigid geometry of the rectangular canvas (a lesson Cezanne would take from him a century later). The effect was of unmediated spontaneity, the pulse of life captured in its most commonplace moments.
In The Cut Melon, Chardin achieves something quite different. Within its large and generous oval surround, the artist arranges his fruits, bottles and porcelain to characteristically natural effect, but with an almost stately dignity that conveys not immediacy and impermanence, but a sense of time stilled – something both eternal and monumental. The constant play of curves is so complex but perfectly calculated as it make it impossible to imagine shifting any single element on his table without diminishing the whole – even the freshly cut slice of fruit, balanced precariously on top of the melon, seems as inevitable and lasting as the pyramids. This effect is achieved not just through the picture’s tightly organized design, but a warm and subtle color palette and ingenious play of light – what Pierre Rosenberg describes as “a mysterious half-light” – that envelops the entire composition in a palpable sense of atmosphere and gives it unity and depth. The bold, distinct brushstrokes of his youthful work are largely gone, replaced with gently modulated, blended brushwork, which adjusts itself throughout, as the artist moves his brush from one surface to another. The textured skin of the cantaloupe is rendered in rough, dry layers of chalky pigment, while the orange-colored flesh of the melon seems almost moist in its thinly brushed translucence. The velvety skin of the peaches contrast with the polished, firm skins of the pears, which flicker in the reflected light. Bright highlights reflect off the dark glass of the bottles, while deep shadows give volume to the matte-finished porcelain of the ewer; for each surface – opaque or translucent, hard and rough, or moist and delicate – Chardin has created a magically convincing equivalent in paint.
An identical version of The Cut Melon, signed but not dated, is in the Louvre, arriving with the bequest of Dr. Louis La Caze, physician and amateur painter, whose collection of mostly 18th-century French paintings stands to this day as one of most important gifts in the museum’s history. La Caze owned the painting by 1860, when he lent it to the historic exhibition at Galerie Martinet, where, as Pauline Prévost-Marcilhacy speculates, it may have been seen by Charlotte de Rothschild. The La Caze painting was long accepted as a second ‘version’ of The Cut Melon by Chardin himself who did, after all, paint multiple versions of some of his still life compositions. However, following its cleaning and restoration in the 1970s, it has been removed from the canon of Chardin’s authentic works. As Rosenberg observed, “the quality of the Louvre painting is far inferior” to that of the Rothschild canvas, adding “we hesitate to attribute it to Chardin.” The Louvre now classifies their version as from the ‘Atelier de Chardin’, but whether it was produced by another hand under Chardin’s direction, or is just a good but inferior copy made at a later date, has not been established. The present painting remains unique in Chardin’s oeuvre and a signature work of his genius.
As the livret of the Salon of 1761 notes, The Cut Melon and its pendant were lent to the exhibition by their owner, Jacques Roëttiers (1707-1784), goldsmith to the king. Born outside Paris into a distinguished dynasty of medallists, engravers and silversmiths, Roëttiers studied drawing and sculpture at the Acadèmie Royale. In 1732 he moved to London and was appointed Engraver at the Royal Mint. (That his mother was the niece of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, may have aided his assent to the post.) He returned to Paris only a year later, married the daughter of Nicolas Besnier, Goldsmith to the King, and acceded to the position in 1737, following his father-in-law’s death. Fashionable, brilliantly talented, and rich, he retired from his post in 1774 and died in Paris in 1784. Given the scale and ambition of The Cut Melon and The Jar of Apricots and the evident length of time that Chardin labored over them – two years separate the finished paintings – it seems reasonable to assume that Roëttiers commissioned them from the artist. One might also wonder if he inspired Chardin to paint them in an oval format he had not previously employed. Upon the goldsmith’s death in 1784, the pictures were inherited by his son, Alexandre-Louis Roëttiers de Montaleau (1748-1808), himself a silversmith and medallist, who retained them until 1802 when he sold them at auction, where they were acquired – for 21 francs! – by Guillaume-Jean Constantin (1755-1816), an art dealer and conservator of the collection of the Empress, Josephine de Beauharnais at Malmaison.
The paintings next entered the Marcille collection, although by what route they arrived there remains uncertain. In 1863, Camille Marcille wrote in a letter to the Goncourt brothers that the pictures were “bought by my father [François] from a descendant of Chardin, who was living behind the Porte Saint-Denis or the Porte Saint-Martin; I would decide rather in favor of the latter.” (The collector Laurent Laperlier similarly recounted to the Goncourts in 1864 that he had purchased a Chardin still life for 20 francs many years earlier from a 95 year-old relative of the artist, a onetime architect, who lived in the Porte Saint-Martin.) While the story cannot be discounted, it is more likely that François-Martial Marcille purchased the oval Chardins from Guillaume-Jean Constantin or his son, Amédée Constantin sometime between 1816, the year of the elder Constantin’s death, and 1830, which saw the closure of the gallery.
Born in Orléans in 1790 to a long line of laborers, François Marcille was initially a seed merchant in Chartres, who gave it up, moved to Paris with his young family, and established himself as a successful painter. Over a period of years he amassed what remains the greatest collection of Chardin’s paintings ever assembled. Following his death in 1856, some of his collection was sold at auction, but the largest portion was divided between his two sons, Eudoxe (1814-1890) and Camille (1816-1875). Eudoxe, later Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, lent works generously to exhibitions throughout the second half of the 19th century, including the first comprehensive exhibition of 18th-century French art ever undertaken at Galerie Martinet in 1860. Organized by Philippe Burty, the exhibition marked a turning point in the so-called ‘Rococo Revival’, and proved a seminal event that introduced the art of the Ancién Regime to an audience which, by and large, had never before seen it. The share of the Marcille collection inherited by Camille, who served as Curator of the Musée de Chartres, was dispersed at auction in 1876, shortly after his death; Eudoxe Marcille’s part of the collection remained intact and has passed to subsequent generations of his descendants.
Among the works included in Camille Marcille’s estate sale in 1876 were The Cut Melon and its pendant, where they appeared as lots 16 and 17, respectively, and were acquired by the dealer Stephane Bourgeois for Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild. Born in Paris to Betty von Rothschild and James Mayer de Rothschild, founder of the French branch of the celebrated banking family, Charlotte de Rothschild (1825-1899) married her English-born cousin Nathaniel de Rothschild (1812-1870) in 1842, returning with him to Paris in 1850, when he took charge of her father’s bank, Rothschild Frérès. A gifted and prolific watercolorist who exhibited her works at the Paris Salons, Charlotte devoted herself to serious art collecting after her husband’s death in 1870, with Chardin soon establishing himself as her favorite painter. In time, the Baroness acquired more than 20 paintings by (or then attributed) to the artist. Her grandson, Henri de Rothschild (1872-1947), to whom she bequeathed her collection, wrote that “she admired Chardin’s technique, his science of light and colour. She sought out his works, in which she found the qualities of sincerity and truth of the old French school, carried in perfect balance to their highest expression.” Tellingly, she kept the paintings by Chardin in her studio, as objects of personal study, not in the grand reception rooms of the Château de Ferrières and her Paris townhouse in rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
We would like to thank Alan Wintermute, art historian, for writing the above catalogue note.
| Artist: | Jean Siméon Chardin (1699 - 1779) |
|---|---|
| Applied technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Art style: | Old Masters |
| Genre: | Still life |
| Place of origin: | Western Europe, France, Europe |
| Auction house category: | Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Paintings |
| Artist: | Jean Siméon Chardin (1699 - 1779) |
|---|---|
| Applied technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Art style: | Old Masters |
| Genre: | Still life |
| Place of origin: | Western Europe, France, Europe |
| Auction house category: | Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Paintings |
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