The Monkey Antiquarian

The Monkey Antiquarian by Chardin, painted around 1740, is one of his singeries — satirical paintings depicting monkeys engaged in human activities that had been popular in French decorative art since the late seventeenth century. Singeries, popularized by the designer Claude Audran and developed into a decorative system by Antoine Watteau, used the monkey's mimicry to satirize human pretension. Chardin's Monkey Antiquarian targets the art collector and connoisseur, depicting a monkey examining prints and medals with the absorbed concentration of a learned gentleman. The humor is self-reflexive: Chardin was himself producing work for collectors and connoisseurs, and the satirical monkey antiquarian comments on the social rituals of cultural consumption within which his own career operated.

The monkey is rendered with characteristic Chardin precision, its simian features giving the antiquarian's serious expression a comically deflating quality. The surrounding objects of connoisseurship are painted with the same care Chardin brought to his legitimate still lifes.