The Scullery Maid
Jean Siméon Chardin·c. 1738
Historical Context
Chardin's Scullery Maid from around 1738 depicts a kitchen servant at work — one of the lowest rungs of domestic service — in the same spirit of respectful observation that characterized all his genre scenes of working women. Scullery maids performed the most arduous and menial kitchen tasks: washing dishes, cleaning pots, managing the kitchen's most physically demanding work. Chardin gives this woman engaged in humble labor the same visual dignity and artistic attention he brought to his most admired still life objects, asserting implicitly that all work honestly performed deserves the painter's full attention. This democratic vision of pictorial subjects was one of Chardin's most radical contributions to European art.
Technical Analysis
Chardin's technique renders the working figure with warm, sympathetic modeling and soft, natural lighting. The kitchen setting is suggested through carefully observed still-life details — utensils, vessels, foodstuffs — each rendered with the precise tonal relationships that are Chardin's hallmark. The muted, warm palette creates an atmosphere of quiet industry.
Provenance
Possibly Jacques Augustin de Silvestre [1719-1809], Paris; possibly (his estate sale, F.L. Regnault-Delalande, Paris, 28 February - 25 March 1811, no. 13, paired with _Return from Market_);[1] Laneuville. Godfrey von Preyer, Vienna. William Andrews Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art. [1] Paul Rosenberg, _Chardin_, exh. cat. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Kunstmuseum et Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf; Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Paris, 1999: 230, no. 53.
