The Kitchen Table

At the Paris Salon of 1757 two small Chardins hung as a pair, and both belonged to Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully. A year earlier he had been made introducer of ambassadors at the court of Louis XV, and while most Paris collectors were buying Rubens and Rembrandt, he was filling his house with French painters of his own day. This is one of the two. It shows the humble end of the household, kitchen things such as a copper pot and a mortar and pestle. Its companion, known as the Butler's Pantry Table, set out the finer pieces used for serving. Chardin signed this canvas at the lower right with a date that is only partly legible, and the museum reads it, with a question mark, as 1755. Close examination shows that he kept moving objects as he painted. The mortar and pestle at the right were reworked, and the change can be seen with the naked eye. Between 1779 and 1807 the two pictures came up at Paris sales again and again, nearly always in a single lot, and in 1807 that lot went for less than 24 francs.