Le Singe peintre

A monkey dressed as a painter sits before an easel in this companion piece to the Monkey Antiquarian, both from around 1735 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres. The painting monkey — Le Singe peintre — parodies the artistic profession itself, using the monkey's mimicry as a metaphor for the painter's activity of imitation. The singerie tradition used animal mimicry to satirize human pretension, and Chardin's choice to paint a monkey as a painter is reflexively self-critical: painting as an art form rests on imitation of nature, and the monkey-painter literalizes what critics of academic painting saw as mere copying without understanding. The Chartres museum's possession of both singeries preserves their relationship as companion satires on the connected worlds of art production and art collection.

Chardin renders the costumed monkey with the same careful attention to surface that characterizes all his painting. The artist's tools—easel, palette, brushes—are depicted with the knowing precision of a painter representing his own instruments. The companion piece format creates a dialogue between two aspects of artistic culture: the connoisseur's judgment and the painter's practice.