Still Life with a White Mug
Jean Siméon Chardin·c. 1764
Historical Context
Chardin's Still Life with a White Mug from around 1764 is a late work that shows his mature still life practice in its most concentrated form — a very small number of objects arranged with maximum pictorial intelligence and rendered with unmatched observational precision. By 1764, Chardin was approaching sixty, his reputation fully established and his prices among the highest for any French painter. His late still lifes are more austere and concentrated than his earlier work, the arrangements simpler and the pictorial focus more intense. The white ceramic mug, a humble everyday object, becomes in Chardin's treatment an occasion for meditation on the relationship between surface appearance and inner substance that his still lifes consistently evoke.
Technical Analysis
The late still life shows Chardin's technique at its most refined and economical, with a limited number of objects rendered with quiet precision. The white mug is painted with subtle variations of white and gray that suggest form and surface, while the overall palette is warm and muted. The brushwork is deliberate and measured, each touch contributing to the painting's contemplative mood.
Provenance
Baron de Saint-Julien;[1] (his sale, Hôtel de Bullion, Paris, 21 June 1784 and days following, no. 69 [a pair of Chardin still lifes]); Dulac. Peter Adolf Hall [1739-1793], Paris; by inheritance in his family to Mme. Lucie Ditte de Montgomery [1861-1926] Paris, a descendant of his daughter Lucie; (sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 13 March 1922, no. 9);[2] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London); sold 12 August 1925 to (Kunsthandel AG, Lucerne and Paul Cassirer, Amsterdam);[3] sold 22 January 1929 to (Wildenstein & Co., Inc, Paris, New York, and London); sold by 1933 to William R. [1866-1949] and Lillian S. [1881-1959] Timken, New York; (Paul Drey, New York); purchased May 1937 by W. Averell [1891-1986] and Marie N.[1903-1970] Harriman, New York;[4] W. Averell Harriman Foundation, New York; gift 1972 to NGA. [1] The title page of the 1874 sale catalogue reads "...Cabinet de M. le Baron de Saint J***," and the seller is further identified by hand-written annotations to the title page and by Frits Lugt as Baron de Saint J[ulien]. Although two Saint-Juliens have been confused in the literature, the owner of the Chardin was probably François-David Bollioud, seigneur de Saint-Julien (1713-c. 1789), the _receveur général du clergé_. His residence in Paris became the Hôtel de Lannoy (site of famous interior decorations commissioned in 1798 from Pierre-Paul Prud'hon), and he also had constructed the Château de Fontaine-Française near Dijon, which was built over four years from 1754 to 1758 on the site of an old fortress that was owned by the woman he married in 1748, Anne-Madeleine de la Tour du Pin. See John Ingamells, _The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Pictures. III: French before 1815_, London, 1989: P430, 161-165. [2] The second of Hall's four children was Angélique Lucie Hall (1774-1819), known as Lucie. Her daughter from her first marriage, Lucie Garnier [b. 1793], married Charles-Honoré Ditte. Lucie and Charles Ditte's granddaughter, a third Lucie (daughter of their son, Henri Ditte), married in 1884 "George de Pembroke, Lord Montgomery," who has not yet been identified among the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. Although the catalogue for the 1922 sale in which the NGA Chardin appeared describes her as "Madame Ditte, née de Montgomery," she was actually Madame de Montgomery, née Ditte, an author and poet. See Régine de Plinval de Guillebon, _Pierre Adolphe Hall, 1739-1793, Miniaturiste suédois, Peintre du Roi et des Enfants de France_, Paris, 2000: 26, 42, 65, 93, 161. [3] See index cards K 175 25 and L 05715 from the Julius Böhler Archiv at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, digitized at http://boehler.zikg.eu/wisski/navigate/259245/view; copies in NGA curatorial file. Although the original title on card no. L 05715 referring to this painting has been struck through and the the title of its pendant written in, the ZI has compared the linked index cards and associated photograph portfolio to confirm this index card relates to the NGA painting rather than its pendant. Information about the 1925 purchase by the Kunsthandel AG (a firm with ties to the Julius Böhler gallery in Munich) and Cassirer, Amsterdam, which owned the painting jointly (50/50), as well as the sale back to Wildenstein in 1929, as indicated in the Böhler Archiv records, was kindly provided by Dr. Theresa Sepp of the ZI in emails of 1 March and 14 April 2023 (copy in NGA curatorial file). [4] According to Harriman collection records in NGA curatorial files. The painting was published in a 1933 reference as belonging to the Timkens.
