Still-Life with Jar of Olives

Chardin's 'Still-Life with Jar of Olives' of 1760, in the Louvre, returns to the challenge of depicting glass containing a coloured substance that had occupied him in the 'Jar of Apricots' of two years earlier. Here the glass jar holds olives in brine — green-grey in colour, the liquid slightly cloudy — requiring a different optical treatment from the warm amber of preserved apricots. The Louvre holds both jar paintings, allowing direct comparison of how Chardin handled two different problems of transparency and contained colour within a few years of each other. The olive jar's somewhat cooler, more opaque contents demand a subtly different paint strategy: less luminous transparency, more attention to the way the liquid modifies and obscures the olives within. Secondary objects in the composition — a bottle, possibly a ceramic — provide familiar Chardin surface contrasts.

The jar of olives is rendered through cooler, less luminous glazes than the apricot version — the cloudy brine modifies the transparency of the glass itself, reducing the play of light through the liquid. Olives within are suggested through soft, slightly darkened masses visible through the glass wall. The jar's mouth and rim are handled with the same precise highlight technique Chardin used for all glass vessels.