Still Life with Fowl

Dead fowl are arranged in this early still life from 1728 with a Munich Central Collecting Point provenance — indicating the work passed through the Allied processing center for German art displaced during World War II before reaching its current location. Chardin's early game and poultry pieces from the late 1720s established his entry into the French art world, and this work dates from the very beginning of his mature career. The Munich provenance documents the wartime displacement and postwar restitution processes that affected thousands of works from European collections. Chardin's game still lifes follow a tradition with aristocratic associations — hunting trophies displayed as evidence of landed leisure — but his treatment converts the trophy into a meditation on form and texture.

The fowl are rendered with careful attention to the different textures of feathers—the smooth breast plumage, the coarser wing feathers, the softer down. Chardin's early technique shows precise observation translated into convincing painterly effects. The muted palette of browns, greys, and whites captures the actual color range of dead poultry with characteristic honesty.