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Basket of Plums
- Fruit
- Still life
- Plums
- Cherries
- Walnuts
- Blue
- White
- Purple
- Red
- Stone
"Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art français," Palais National des Arts, Paris, 1937. (Exhib. cat. no. 144).
"Origins of Modern Art," Arts Club of Chicago, April 1940. (Exhib. cat. no. 20).
"Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jan. 16 - May 11, 1941. (Exhib. cat. no. 34).
"Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Seattle Art Museum; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Art Institute; St. Louis City Art Museum; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 2, 1956 - April 14, 1957. (Exhib. cat. no. 64).
"Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown Inaugural Exhibition," Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1958. (Exhib. cat. no. 11).
"French Masters of the Eighteenth Century," Finch College Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 27 - April 7, 1963. (Exhib. cat. no. 17).
"Still Life Painters: Pieter Aertsen 1508-1575 to George Braque 1882-1963," Finch College Museum of Art, New York, opened Feb. 2, 1965. (Exhib. cat. no. 25).
"Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, June 12 - Sept. 5, 1977. (Exhib. cat. no. 21).
"French Paintings from the Chrysler Museum," North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, May 31 - Sept. 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, Nov. 6, 1986 - Jan. 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 13).
"Inspiring Impressionism," High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, October 16, 2007 - January 13, 2008; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, February 23 - May 25, 2008; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, June 19 - September 21, 2008
French, 1699-1779
Basket of Plums, 1765
Oil on canvas
The subject couldn’t be much humbler: a wicker basket heaped with plums and placed on a stone ledge amid a scattering of walnuts, cherries, and currants. In an era when French painting was known for its grandeur and decorative embellishments, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s still lifes and genre scenes were renowned for their simplicity and directness. Though considered too modest to be ranked alongside the extravagant works of François Boucher (on the opposite side of this room), Chardin’s paintings charmed many of his contemporaries. The great Paris intellectual Denis Diderot praised Chardin for his truthfulness and unassuming poetry—the very qualities that captivate us today.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.506
French, 1699-1779
Basket of Plums, c. 1765
Oil on canvas, 12¾" x 16½" (32.4 x 41.9 cm)
Signed lower left: _chardin_
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.506
References: _Chardin 1699-1779_, exhib. cat., Grand Palais, Paris et al., 1979, pp.333-334; Harrison, _CM_, 1986, no. 13.
In the art academies of eighteenth-century Europe, painters of historical and religious themes (see nos. 47, 52) were valued far more highly than those who devoted themselves to the "minor subjects" of genre, landscape, and still life. Yet, the most inspired interpreters of the minor subjects could achieve considerable fame in their lifetimes and genuine immortality in the annals of art history. One such genius was Chardin, who was among the most revered painters of still life and genre in mid-eighteenth-century Paris. Championed particularly by the influential philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot (d. 1784), Chardin enjoyed both official and popular success. He was an honored member of the Académie Royale and a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon, and his paintings were avidly collected by a newly affluent French middle class.
In his later still lifes, Chardin abandoned his earlier interest in the meticulous delineation of texture and detail and concentrated on more profound visual elements. Color and volume, half-light and highlight, the broad compositional interplay of solid and void - these became the underlying concerns of his mature still lifes such as the _Basket of Plums_. When the painting - or its replica, which is located today in a private French collection - was shown by Chardin at the 1765 Salon, Diderot described it briefly in his commentaries on the exhibition:
...placed on a stone bench, a wicker basket full of plus, for which a paltry string serves as a handle, and scattered around it some walnuts, two or three cherries and a few small bunches of grapes [in truth, white currants].
Though the arrangement is typically spare, the effect on the eye is magical. The luscious mound of purple and rosy red plums smolders in the shadowy light. The currants gleam like pearls. What emerges from this humble assembly of fruits and nuts, and from the velvety brushwork that informs it, is a vision of the poetic essence of objects that dazzled Chardin's contemporaries and captivates us perhaps even more today.
Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1991, No. 56, 75, color illustration 75.