1793), influenced by previous commentators such as JeanBaptiste Du Bos (1670–1742) and La Font de
Saint Yenne, stated:
Men like to meet others everywhere; this propensity is the seed of sociability.... Landscape, fruit and
animals are admired, but they will never be as interesting as a good head.
(cited in Démoris, 2000, 106)In the mideighteenth century the term “interesting” carried strong connotations of emotional human
interest.
Diderot was among critics such as the engraver and art critic, Cochin, and the antiquarian, Caylus, who
described Chardin’s technique as “sublime” (Diderot, 1995a, 56), an accolade more normally applied to
“high” art (Démoris, 2000, 108). Outstanding technical skill was felt to be essential in the still life genre,
where the subjects themselves were “ordinary.” Most praise was directed at Chardin’s subtle
compositions, use of brushwork, color and light, which provided an antithesis to more glamorous or
spectacular still lifes playing on the surface brilliance of shiny objects or dramatic, theatrical
arrangements of space. Not only was Chardin’s technique much subtler in these respects, it drew full (and
“modern”) advantage from a loose focus on (rather than clear delineation of) the edges and surfaces of
objects, diffuse lighting, uncertainly defined spaces and a lack of any dominant central motifs. This
carefully contrived “naturalness,” which had to be appreciated at some distance from the canvas, has been
described as part of a constructed fiction of the “casual” glance, making his works appear “unaware of”
or uninviting to the viewer (Weisberg and Talbot, 1979, 18–21; Bryson, 1990, 91; Démoris, 2000, 107).
His approach does not assume in the viewer a “commanding” or “sovereign” (even perhaps
“aristocratic”) way of seeing, but allows a freer negotiation of the viewer’s position in relation to the
scene presented. Partly for this reason it is often characterized as offering a more “democratic” form of
viewing. This subtler approach to still life painting shows a substantial revision of the rococoinspired
techniques Chardin had used earlier in his career (Bailey, 2000, 90). It had something in common with the
“humble,” nonspectacular presentation of everyday objects in the seventeenthcentury still lifes of Juan
Sánchez Cotán (1561–1627) and Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664) (Bryson, 1990, 63–65), but even
they had used more dramatic effects of light and composition, and some of their objects had been
represented in startlingly clear focus. Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716–1780) continued their style of still life
painting into the eighteenth century.
For a very long time, and for reasons connected with its focus on “technique,” still life painting was
overlooked within art history and art criticism, with exceptions made for artists such as Chardin. This
was largely the case in the eighteenth century, but scholarship has now closed this gap and has applied to
still life painting of the eighteenth and other centuries the kind of critical enquiry more commonly applied
to other genres. Norman Bryson has described still life painting as “the life of people among material
things” (Bryson, 1990, 131), suggesting that the representation of objects in still life paintings can reveal
a great deal about the lives, discourses and societies of those who made and viewed them. Although the
range of objects represented in still lifes has remained fairly constant since antiquity, these paintings often
inflect this standard repertoire with specific historical and material circumstances, including
contemporary ideologies, economic developments and understandings of class and gender (Bryson, 1990,
12). On a simple level, this means that we may choose to study eighteenthcentury still lifes in order to
see what they reveal of contemporary lifestyles; for example, the growing eighteenthcentury fashion for
drinking coffee, chocolate and tea. Chardin’s art has been studied with a view to tracing the increasing
affluence of his own home (from which his still life objects came) as well as new middleclass fashions
for Chantilly porcelain, tinglazed earthenware, crystal glassware and ceramic designs influenced by or
imported from the Far East (Rochebrune, 2000, 37–54). His assemblages of table ware illustrate the