The Sliced Melon

Chardin's 'The Sliced Melon' of 1760, held at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, is one of his most striking late-period compositions, centred on a melon that has been cut to reveal its interior. The exposed flesh — pale green or orange depending on variety, moist and slightly translucent — provided Chardin with the opportunity to paint a surface unlike any other in his still-life vocabulary: soft, damp, slightly textured, with an interior colour qualitatively different from the rind. The Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Louis Kahn and opened in 1972, has assembled a collection focused on works of exceptional quality, and the Chardin is among its most highly regarded European pictures. By 1760 Chardin's still-life compositions had achieved a formal economy in which the subject's intrinsic visual interest carried the entire pictorial weight without need for compositional complexity.

The cut melon's interior demands paint handling of exceptional sensitivity: the moist, slightly fibrous flesh is rendered through thin, wet-looking strokes over a lighter ground, giving it a humid quality distinct from the dry rind exterior. The rind's mottled surface is built up with a rougher, drier application. Surrounding objects — bowl, possibly a knife — are kept tonally subordinate to allow the melon's unusual interior to dominate.