Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin Biography
Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, born in Paris on November 2, 1966, was a French painter specializing in still lifes and genre paintings. Almost all of his paintings are small in size and feature very simple subjects, with scenes of bourgeois life. In 1728 he was admitted to the royal academy as a painter predisposed to painting animals and fruit.
The artist reached the peak of his career around 1750, when Louis XV granted him an annual stipend as well as residency at the Louvre. Despite brief visits to Versailles and Fontainebleau, he appears to have never left Paris.
Chardin's artistic life can be said to be divided into three periods: the first period, until around 1733, in which he mainly painted still lifes, game scenes or kitchen utensils. In later years, the artist concentrated on genre scenes, which depicted one or two figures and were devoid of sentimentality or affectation. Finally, around 1770, he abandoned oil painting and devoted himself to pastel portraits, including self-portraits, portraits of children and other artists.
Chardin died on 6 December 1779, at the age of eighty, in his Parisian home in the Louvre.
