The House of Cards
Jean Siméon Chardin·probably 1737
Historical Context
Chardin's House of Cards from 1737 depicts a young man absorbed in the precarious construction of a card tower — an activity that was both a pastime and an emblem of vanity, the house of cards being a traditional symbol of human ambition's fragility. Chardin painted this subject multiple times, drawn to the subject's combination of absorbed concentration and implicit symbolism. His genre scenes of young people engaged in solitary activities — soap bubbles, houses of cards, spinning tops — create a distinctive meditation on absorption and time that Diderot praised as among the most truthful paintings in French art. The subject's traditional vanitas associations are subsumed in Chardin's treatment into pure observation of light, surface, and concentrated human activity.
Technical Analysis
Chardin's technique captures the absorbed concentration of the figure with quiet, understated mastery. The tonal palette of browns and muted colors creates an intimate atmosphere, while the still-life details are rendered with the artist's characteristic precision. The brushwork is refined but visible, building up form through small, deliberate touches.
Provenance
Catherine II, empress of Russia [1729-1796], by 1774, for the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, Saint Petersburg;[1] purchased March 1931 through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London; and M. Knoedler & Co., New York) by Andrew W. Mellon [1855-1937], Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 1 May 1937 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[2] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The painting first appeared in a Hermitage catalogue in 1774. See Serge Ernst, "Notes sur des tableaux français de l'Ermitage," _Revue de l'Art_ 68, no. 365 (November 1935): 135-144, who says that the manuscript catalogue was drawn up by Ernst Milich between 1777 and 1785; _Little Girl with a Shuttlecock_ is no. 407; _The House of Cards_ is no. 408. Rosenberg, in Pierre Rosenberg, _Chardin, 1699-1779_, Exh. cat. (Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Cleveland, 1979: 234, under no. 72, states (in reference to the same catalogue, which he dates to 1774, following Paul Lacroix, "Musée de Palais de l'Hermitage sous le règne de Catherine II," _Revue Universelle des Arts_ 13 [1861]: 178, no. 408) that "no. 408 '_Un jeune garcon faisant des maisons de cartes_' refers indisputably to the painting now in Washington." [2] The dates of the Mellon purchase and the deed to the Mellon Trust are according to Mellon records in NGA curatorial files and David Finley's notebook (donated to NGA in 1977 and now in Gallery Archives).
