Still-Life with Two Rabbits

Two dead rabbits compose this still life from around 1750 at the Musée de Picardie in Amiens. Chardin returned repeatedly to the subject of game animals throughout his career, finding in their soft fur and limp forms opportunities for paint handling of extraordinary subtlety. His game still lifes follow the Flemish tradition of hunting trophies — a genre with long aristocratic associations — but Chardin transforms the expected display of abundance into intimate meditations on texture and form. By 1750 he had been painting such subjects for more than twenty years and had elevated the kitchen and game still life to a position of critical prestige within the French academic hierarchy, which traditionally placed history painting above still life.

The paired rabbits create a composition of quiet gravity, their limp forms arranged with the deceptive casualness that conceals Chardin's careful compositional calculation. His rendering of the different textures of fur demonstrates the tactile sensitivity that distinguishes his still lifes. The restricted palette of browns, whites, and greys captures the actual tonal range of the subject without embellishment.