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©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin

Still Life with Pestle and Mortar, Pitcher and Copper Cauldron

ca. 1728 - 1732
Oil on canvas.
32.5 x 39 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
118
(
1930.14
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
Like the previous pair, this still life is an early work by the artist, whose first known compositions fall within this genre. Relatively little is known regarding Chardin’s life prior to 1718, the date when he began his training with Pierre-Jacques Cazes as an apprentice, after which he spent a brief period with Noël-Nicolas Coypel. In the 1720s Chardin began to enjoy his first successes, exhibiting for the first time at the Place Dauphine and accepted by the Académie as a painter of fruit and animals, both of which he included in his still life compositions, along with kitchen vessels and other implements.

The first still lifes attributed to the artist are simple and austere, both with regard to the type of objects chosen and their limited number, all depicted with a rigorous use of colour. Chardin generally presented these elements on a thick, heavy, stone tabletop, on which he arranged everyday kitchen objects in a practical manner. These simple elements are made of rustic materials such as terracotta, copper, wood, wicker and glass and the artist plays with their colours and textures against plain backgrounds, creating multiple variants that are always structured in a carefully meditated manner.

In the case of Still Life with Pestle and Mortar, Pitcher and copper Cauldron, Chardin depicts a wooden pestle and mortar, a pottery pitcher, a small copper cauldron or cooking pot and a fired terracotta dish of a type used for cooking. In front of them in the foreground is a white cloth of a thick weave on which are arranged a handful of onions, potatoes, two eggs and some thin leeks. Chardin uses devices derived from northern art to create a sense of depth such as the white cloth that falls over the front of the tabletop or the line of the projecting leeks, which recede into the pictorial space and replace the traditional knife handles that project over the edge of tabletops in Flemish and Dutch art. One of the finest passages in the present canvas is the study of the whites in the foreground, used in different shades in the skin of the onions, the eggs and the coarse tablecloth. In addition to this subtle range of textures and tones we find an interplay of chromatic nuances between the potatoes and the terracotta dish that creates a contrast of warm and cool tones. The wooden pestle and mortar on the left would be used by Chardin in other compositions, as would the pitcher and the copper cooking pot.

The canvas is signed and has been dated to around 1728 to 1732. Formerly in the Gans collection in Basel, it was included in the exhibition of works from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection held at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich in 1930. If we compare this work with others of the same period in which the cooking implements and the foodstuffs are more abundant, it is possible to appreciate Chardin’s outstanding ability to create compositions filled with charm and life through the use of a limited range of modest elements.

Mar Borobia
18th Century18th Century - French paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Still Life with Pestle and Mortar, Pitcher and Copper Cauldron. Bodegón con almirez,cántaro y caldero de cobre, c. 1728-1732
Still Life with Pestle and Mortar, Pitcher and Copper Cauldron
Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Still Life with Pestle and Mortar, Pitcher and Copper Cauldron. Bodegón con almirez,cántaro y caldero de cobre, c. 1728-1732
Still Life with Pestle and Mortar, Pitcher and Copper Cauldron
Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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