Featuring 57 paintings, "Chardin, the Painter of the Silence" offers a rare opportunity to appreciate the work of Jean S. Chardin (1699–1779), and is the first on the artist to be held in Spain, at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The exhibition is currently on view, and can be seen until May 29th. Members of the ARTKABINETT fine arts social network are encouraged to visit this historic showing
The exhibition is structured chronologically, covering the most important phases of the artist's career from his beginnings in the second decade of the 18th century to his late pastels of the 1770s.
Visitors will encounter some of Chardin's most celebrated paintings, shown alongside other, little known canvases loaned from private collections, and some recently identified compositions.
In addition, the version to be shown in the Prado includes 16 works not exhibited in Italy. They include "The Ray", one of Chardin's most important paintings, loaned from the Musée du Louvre; "The Attributes of the Arts", from the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, which is a large-format composition on an allegorical theme that has never previously been loaned to an exhibition; and the three versions of 'The young School Teacher" (National Gallery London, National Gallery of Art Washington, and National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), now shown together for the first time in Madrid.
Chardin (self portrait here) spent his entire life in Paris. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities. Carefully balanced composition, soft diffusion of light, and granular impasto characterize his work. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre.
The exhibition opens with still lifes from the second half of the 1720s, including the celebrated painting "The Ray", on loan from the Louvre. It was Chardin's entry piece into the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris but the artist was only admitted in the lesser category of "Painter of animals and fruit".
The Prado Museum (Museo del Prado) in the Spanish capital, Madrid, is the most prestigious museum in Spain and probably the largest gallery of classical paintings in the world. The museum features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection.
The building that is now the home of the Museo Nacional del Prado was designed on the orders of Charles III in 1785 by the architect Juan de Villanueva. Originally designed to house the Natural History Cabinet, construction was delayed by the War of Independence and the building’s final function was eventually decided by Charles III’s grandson, Ferdinand VII.
Encouraged by his wife, Queen María Isabel de Braganza, the building became the new Royal Museum of Paintings and Sculptures.
The Royal Museum, which would soon become known as the National Museum of Painting and Sculpture and following nationalization in 1868, the Museo Nacional del Prado (after the area of Madrid in which it is located), opened to the public for the first time in November 1819.
Despite the size of the original building, space has always been a problem, and in 1971 the nearby Casón del Buen (which began life in 1637 as a ballroom for the Buen Retiro Palace) was acquired to house the 19th century collections from the Prado and “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso.
