The Ray

A skinned, gutted skate hangs from a hook, its pale flesh split open, its odd flat face wearing something close to a human grimace. Below, a cat arches over a heap of oysters, and the kitchen tools sit in a quiet clutter. Chardin was in his late twenties and barely known when he brought this forward. In 1728 he carried it to the Royal Academy of Painting in Paris, and the members admitted him the same day, which almost never happened that fast. Still life ranked at the very bottom of what a painter was meant to attempt, yet they could not ignore how he handled paint. Years later the critic Diderot called the split fish disgusting and praised it in the same breath. Matisse copied it in the Louvre.