Still Life with a Hare

Chardin's 'Still Life with a Hare' of 1730, held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is an early example of his engagement with the hunting-trophy tradition that would continue throughout his career. The hare — larger than a rabbit and associated with field hunting rather than domestic warrens — was a standard subject in French hunting still life and appears in earlier Dutch and Flemish versions that Chardin would have known through the Paris art market. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds a notable group of Chardin works that collectively illustrate his range across still life, genre, and figure subjects. The early date of this painting places it within Chardin's first decade of mature production, when he was establishing the vocabulary of hunting-trophy and kitchen still life that would define his public identity.

The hare's fur — grey-brown, with a distinctive texture quite different from the softer rabbit — demands a handling that conveys both the coarseness of the outer guard hairs and the softer underfur visible where the animal hangs. Chardin builds the form through layered directional strokes, with the dead animal's weight convincingly managed through the distribution of darker shadow tones in the suspended body.