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Twenty years after the first global showing of his paintings a retrospective exhibition of the works of Jean-Baptiste Chardin (1699-1779) has been inaugurated at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Chardin was considered as the last magician of still-life painting during the 18th Century but was then forgotten until at least 1870. Born to a billiard-maker in Paris, he had been admitted as a still-life painter at the French Academy of Painting in 1728 after presenting his skate fish and «Buffet», paintings now in the Louvre museum.

In 1731, Chardin married Marguerite Saintard to whom he had been engaged for eight years, a period during which he faced dire financial difficulties. Marguerite died four years later as well as their daughter in 1737.

In 1745, Chardin married Françoise Marguerite Pouget who brought him a considerable dowry. Seven years later he received a royal pension and became the treasurer of the French Academy in 1755. Chardin also obtained a lodging at the Louvre. In 1767 his son Jean-Pierre, born in 1731, drown in Venice while Chardin became ill in 1769 and never recovered until his death ten years later.

Chardin was an austere painter who did not work fast. Asked once if he painted with colours he replied : «with my feelings. Colours are just to be used».

He was only interested in nature and often repeated the same subjects, still lifes with game mainly and some genre scenes. Twenty years ago Paris celebretated the 200th anniversary of his death. Now the Grand Palais is paying homage to the painter's 300 th anniversary of his birth until November 22nd 1999.

Pierre Rosenberg, the head of the Louvre Museum who is known as the world number one specialist of Chardin, said the painter was somewhat of a rebel and that the 96 paintings shown at the Grand Palais were chosen to prove his modernistic approach as well as a possible link with Fantin-Latour rather than with the Le Nain brothers.

Much attention has been given to present works under their best angles on coloured walls like in England such as the lady drinking tea, the young man playing the violin, the child with a teetotum, Mr Lenoir's son trying to build a castle with playing cards, the charming young girl with a shuttlecock and the young draugthsman.

Early works are shown in the first rooms of the National galleries of the Grand Palais such as the Skate and the cat among oysters or the «Buffet» with fruit.

Chardin was not really at ease with living nature but at his best with dead rabbits and other still lifes. On the first floor are shown the works of his successful years after he gave up painting still lifes preferring to produce simplified genre scenes. He returned to still life painting fifteen years later however limiting himself to the same subjects as before, showing the same bottles, the same goblets and fruit disposed on the same wood or marble table.

In the last room are presented his late portraits, notably his self-portrait
produced in pastel, a medium he used at the end of his life as his eyes could not bear the chemical effects of oils anymore.

This quiet man was like Giorgio Morandi who limited himself to painting bottles most of his life and Chardin did not try to extend his range when he painted the same goblets, the same apples and the same still life arrangements. Still he was a realist painter in the vein of some 19th Century artists and was only rediscovered by the Goncourt brothers when they published a study of his works in 1863 and 1864.

The Goncourt brothers hailed Chardin as a naturalist painter but he did not really inspire other masters. In fact Manet was much influenced by Spanish and Dutch still life painters and was less minute than Chardin. Only François Bonvin might have been inspired by him regarding his lighting effects and the way he painted copper recipients. All Impressionist artists ignored Chardin while Cézanne was the only one to draw some of the items shown in his paintings and once said on seeing his self-portrait that he was « cunning» but Cézanne, who paved the way to Cubism, was above all influenced by Venetian painters as well as by Rubens and Delacroix. In fact only Matisse paid some attention to Chardin and copied some of his works in the Louvre Museum during the 1890's. It seems that Matisse was much inspired by Chardin when he painted still lifes and tried to instil colours in his works as the 18th Century painter did.

Afterwards Chardin was regarded as a traditionalist master with Poussin and the Le Nain brothers and in 1937, Aragon, the Surrealist poet, described him as being a true French painter, perhaps the first in the history of art as a result of his realistic touch. In addition, Aragon regarded him as a revolutionary artist well ahead of the French Revolution of 1789 as he limited himself to painting simple subjects and members of the bourgeois circles going therefore against the interests of the aristocracy.