Van Gogh Museum Journal 1995

[p. 102]

[Acquisitions in context]

fig. 1
Thomas Couture, A realist, 1856, oil on canvas, 46 × 38.1 cm, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

[p. 103]

In the light of Chardin: Chardinesque still lifes by Philippe Rousseau and some of his contemporaries
Ronald de Leeuw⁺

In 1865 Thomas Couture (1815-1879) painted a satire on the type of artist he considered his arch-enemy: A realist (fig. 1). As an advocate of an eclectic approach to art where realism and classical motifs were not mutually exclusive, Couture disliked artists like Gustave Courbet, who he felt narrowed the concept of realism to the point of banality. In his Méthode et entretiens d'atelier Couture explained the canvas as follows: ‘I am depicting the interior of a contemporary studio; it has nothing in common with studios of the past, in which fragments of the finest antiquities could be seen [...]. But thanks to modern progress in artistic matters, new gods have supplanted the old ones. Laocoon has been replaced by a cabbage, the feet of the Gladiator by a candlestick covered with tallow or a shoe.’¹ On the wall of the studio he hung the requisites of Realism: an old lantern, a candlestick, and a worn-out shoe. A true forerunner of Jeff Koons's sculpture Ushering in banality (Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum), Couture's Realist ridicules the classical tradition by portraying a pig - proverbially the most vulgar of animals - while sitting on a head of none other than the ruler of the gods, Jupiter.

Couture found the theme for his canvas in the art of an 18th-century predecessor, the painter Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779). Interestingly enough, Chardin was revered by Couture's opponents, the progressive Realists. Chardin's repertoire includes charming parodies of his profession in the form of singeries, (fig. 2), and it is on these that A realist is based. Details such as the dark wine bottle on the floor beside the painter appear in many Chardin still lifes; in the context of Couture's work it is clearly an allusion to a Bohemian artist's way of life.

Although Chardin's legacy was never completely forgotten, thanks in particular to the work of his immediate followers Roland Delaporte (1724/25-1793) and Anne

fig. 2
Jean-Siméon Chardin, Le singe peintre, 1740, oil on canvas, 73 × 59.5 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre

+ This article is in part an elaboration on my Introduction to the catalogue Philippe Rousseau, 1816-1887, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1993, pp. 5-69, referred to in the following as Amsterdam 1993.
For general information on the Chardin revival in the 19th century see: J.W. McCoubrey, ‘The revival of Chardin in French still-life painting, 1850-1870,’ The Art Bulletin 45 (March 1964), pp. 39-53, and Gabriel P. Weisberg and William S. Talbot, exhib. cat. Chardin and the still-life tradition in France, Cleveland (Museum of Art) 1979.
I should like to thank D.W.W. Hoogendijk of Utrecht for the illustrations of several works by Rousseau which either are, or once were, in Dutch private collections.

1 Quoted from exhib. cat. Aanwinsten-Acquisitions, 1986-1991, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1991, p. 22.

[p. 104]

fig. 3
François Bonvin, Still life with silver goblet and basket of strawberries, 1871, oil on canvas, 45.5 × 36 cm, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (on loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), there was a noticeable revival of interest in his work around the middle of the 19th century.² The collectors François Marcille, Laurent Laperlier, and Louis La Caze all amassed collections of his work, which were accessible to artists, and in December 1846 Pierre Hédouin published the first scholarly studies of the painter. The renewed appreciation for Chardin went hand in hand with a greater demand for still lifes by the wealthy bourgeoisie, a trend that had already set in during the reign of Louis Philippe. Although the official status of the genre remained low at best, critics of the Realist persuasion - such as Théophile Thoré and Jules Champfleury - took up the cause of the neglected 18th-century master. Chardin's meticulous rendering of commonplace objects was championed as a worthy model for artists of their own generation.

2 See Amsterdam 1993, pp. 35-46 and the bibliography on p. 71.

Acquisitions

Thanks to several recent purchases, as well as some long-term loans, the Van Gogh Museum now boasts an attractive array of 19th-century still lifes by such Realist painters as Gustave Courbet, Henri de Fantin-Latour, Georges Jeannin, Théodule Ribot, François Bonvin and Philippe Rousseau.³ Of these artists the last two in particular made a point of consciously developing Chardin's legacy. The genre they practised, known as the ‘humble’ still life, had a tremendous appeal for the artist after whom the Van Gogh Museum is named. In his monograph on Chardin, Philip Conisbee may have characterised his art as ‘highly personal and essentially inimitable,’⁴ but realists of the latter half of the 19th century such as François Bonvin (1817-1887), Philippe Rousseau (1816-1887) and Antoine Vollon (1833-1900) were undaunted. Bonvin in particular lost no time establishing a reputation as a follower of Chardin. His modest way of life and lowly motifs, which included genre scenes of the working class, made him - in the words of the critic Octave Mirbeau - a ‘Chardin contemporanisé.’⁵

In 1991 the Van Gogh Museum received Bonvin's 1871 Still life with silver goblet and basket of strawberries (fig. 3) on long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and in 1992 it purchased his Still life with drawing implements and books (fig. 4) of 1879 on the London market. For the principal motifs in Still life with silver cup and basket of strawberries - the silver goblet and the pile of fruit - Bonvin returned directly to examples by Chardin. A similar goblet figures in an entire series of still lifes by the 18th-century artist, just as the strawberries can be traced to Chardin's Le panier de fraises des bois (Paris, private collection), which belonged to Eudoxe Marcille and was admired by the critic Charles Blanc in 1862, who called it ‘un morceau exquis.’⁶ Goncourt lauded the picture in two different publications, in 1863 and 1880.

The Still life with drawing implements and books,⁷ which was not yet known when Gabriel Weisberg published his catalogue raisonné of Bonvin, dates from 1879 and has a pendant in the form of a still life with painting instruments, last known to be in a Dutch private collection (fig. 5). Painted on zinc, its daring use of bright red in the principal motif is especially striking. Already in the 17th century, still lifes with attributes of the arts and sciences occur frequently, but it was Chardin who distinguished himself within this tradition with works such as The attributes of music (Paris, Musée du Louvre), The attributes of

3 For colour illustrations see Ronald de Leeuw, The Van Gogh Museum: paintings and pastels, Zwolle 1994, pp. 26, 30, 38-41, 88. The works of Jeannin and Ribot derive from the collection of Theo and Vincent van Gogh. Until recently Henri de Fantin Latour's Gerbe de printemps of 1877 (inv. S219 V/1962.11) was likewise thought to have originally belonged to Theo and Vincent. Han Veenenbos informed me, however, that Theo's widow Jo van Gogh-Bonger did not acquire the picture until 1908. She exchanged it with the dealer C.M. van Gogh for Vincent's portrait of La Mousmé (National Gallery, Washington) - not without additional payment!

4 Philip Conisbee, Chardin, London 1986.

5 Octave Mirabeau, ‘La croix de Bonvin,’ in Combats esthétiques, ed. Pierre Michel and Jean-François Nivet, Paris 1993, p. 324. In a remarkable passage of 1886, the year Van Gogh began his series of paintings of footgear, Mirabeau praised Bonvin's depiction of a pair of shoes. The (abridged) passage reads: ‘Bonvin has painted two shoes. Two shoes, you say, one doesn't paint two shoes. If one is going to paint a pair of shoes, one should take care that there are two feet in them, two legs above, and still further a torso! Well, Bonvin has painted two shoes without feet, without a torso, simply a pair of shoes. And this pair isn't at all elegant - which might at least be a justification - not lacked or polished. [...] These shoes are a one of the most poignant and successful military painting I have ever seen’ (‘Bonvin a peint deux souliers. Deux souliers, direz-vous: on ne peint pas deux souliers! Quand on peint deux souliers, on a soin de mettre deux pieds dedans, deux jambes au bout des deux pieds, et un torse au bout des deux jambes! Eh bien, Bonvin a peint deux souliers sans pieds, sans torse, deux souliers. Et ces deux souliers ne sont pas élegants, ce qui lui serait peutêtre une excuse, ni vernis, ni cirés. [...] Ces deux souliers sont un des tableaux militaires les plus poignants et les mieux vécus que j'aie vus’); see ibid. pp. 264-65.

6 Pierre Rosenberg, exhib. cat. Chardin, Paris (Grand Palais), 1979, no. 115, pp. 324-25. The basket of strawberries was also borrowed by earlier imitators of Chardin, such as Thomas Duvivier; see, for example, sale Monaco (Sotheby's) 5 December 1992, lot 56.

7 Inv. S 431 M/1992, acquired in 1992 from Stoppenbach and Delestre Ltd, London. Its pendant, also dated 1879, was exhibited at the Bonvin retrospective at the Galerie D. Rothschild in Paris in May 1886. See Gabriel P. Weisberg, Bonvin: la vie et l'oeuvre, Paris 1979, no. 166.

[p. 105]

fig. 4
François Bonvin, Still life with drawing implements and books, 1879, oil on zinc panel, 25 × 36 cm, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

fig. 5
François Bonvin, The studio table, 1879, oil on zinc panel, 25 × 36 cm, The Netherlands, private collection

fig. 6
Jean-Siméon Chardin, The attributes of the painter, oil on canvas, 50 × 86 cm, Princeton, The Art Museum, Princeton University, gift of Helen Clay Frick

[p. 106]

science and The attributes of the arts (figs. 15 and 16).

A pendant pair in the Art Museum of Princeton University fig. 6) come very close in conception to the two works by Bonvin; attributed to Chardin by Rosenberg in 1979, they formerly belonged to the painter François Flameng (1856-1923).⁸

8 Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 6), nos. 31 and 32, pp. 152-54.

Philippe Rousseau

Besides the two Bonvins, the Van Gogh Museum also acquired three works by Philippe Rousseau (figs. 20, 21 and 24) in rapid succession. These additions were the motivation for a concise monographic exhibition devoted to the artist in 1993. In drawing attention to the Frenchman, the Museum upheld a long-standing tradition of Dutch interest in Rousseau. As De Groene Amsterdammer noted in an exhibition review of 3 March 1923, ‘His work is so prevalent on the Amsterdam market that, were his death in 1887 not an established fact, one would think he was living here.’ Indeed Rousseau is still well represented in the Netherlands, both in public and private collections.⁹

The American art historian Albert Boime regards Rousseau, as well as his comrades Bonvin, Ribot, and Vollon, as simple ‘fellow-travellers’ of the artistic establishment of the Second Empire. He denounced their willingness to compromise and their half-hearted Realism, which the officials were only too happy to endorse.¹⁰ Gabriel Weisberg has taken a more benign view, particularly of Rousseau, pointing out that his art may have influenced his more progressive contemporaries, including Manet.¹¹

Unlike Bonvin, who was never particularly successful, Rousseau was celebrated for many years. During the Second Empire, the Imperial court and Baron James de Rothschild were among his clientele. He figured prominently in the Expositions Universelles of 1855 and 1867, and was made an officer of the Légion d'Honneur in 1870. Paul Lefort, who wrote a double obituary on Rousseau and

fig. 7 Philippe Rousseau, Still life with brazier and eggs c. 1830, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown Utrecht, private collection

Bonvin in 1888, acknowledged the affinity between the work of the two Realists, but also noted ‘the dissimilarities in their means of expression’ in essential points.¹² Moreover, Rousseau's repertoire was broader. Depending on the motif he chose, the Frenchman drew inspiration from the work of Dutch or Flemish colleagues of the 17th century, or borrowed ideas from countrymen who were active in the 18th. In 1856 Théophile Gautier already associated Rousseau with such diverse forerunners as the Dutch artists Snyders and Weenix, and the Spanish painter Melendez.¹³ Indeed, there was hardly a type of still life he

9 See Amsterdam 1993 and exhib. cat. Vier Franse Meesters: Bonvin - Ribot - Rousseau - Vollon, Laren Singer Museum) 1962. Christopher Wright, Paintings in Dutch museums, Amsterdam 1980, p. 395, lists 10 works in Dutch public collections. Much work by Bonvin, Ribot and Vollon can also be found in Dutch collections.

10 Albert Boime, The academy and French painting in the nineteenth century, New Haven 1986, p. 16.

11 Gabriel P. Weisberg, ‘A magic of execution that can drive you to despair,’ Art News 78 (September 1979), no. 7, pp. 100-04.

12 Paul Lefort, ‘Les artistes contemporains: Philippe Rousseau et François Bonvin,’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts 37 (February 1888), pp. 132-45.

13 Théophile Gautier, Les beaux-arts en Europe, Paris 1856, p. 122: ‘M. Philippe Rousseau égale Sneyders, Veenincx, Melendez et les plus fameux.’

[p. 107]

fig. 8 Philippe Rousseau, The ape musician, oil on canvas, 55 × 72 cm, whereabouts unknown (photograph courtesy of Sotheby's Monaco)

did not master, from kitchen pieces to game, fruit, flowers and allegories. One moment he concentrated on just a few objects, the next creating bravura still lifes of great sumptuousness. His prodigious store of motifs set Rousseau apart from his confrères Bonvin and Ribot, who rarely ventured beyond humble subjects and had a much narrower artistic vocabulary at their disposal. Only Ribot's pupil Antoine Vollon could occasionally rival Rousseau in this respect.

Gabriel Weisberg once identified an Oudry-like painting of a lifeless black chicken (La poule noire) in the museum of Louviers, possibly dated 1836, as Rousseau's earliest still life.¹⁴ At the time of the Rousseau exhibition in 1993, however, an even earlier candidate was brought to the Van Gogh Museum's attention: a still life with eggs frying on a chafing dish (fig. 7). If the inscription on the back of the work is to be believed, it was painted around 1830, when the artist was only 14 years old.

It was not until the Salon of 1844 that Rousseau publicly displayed his still lifes, the genre that, along with animal pieces, would eventually form the bulk of his oeuvre. Gautier and Baudelaire immediately saw him as competition for the successful Simon Saint-Jean (1808-1860), who dominated the Salon with his rich flower and pronk still lifes.¹⁵ Rousseau's success at the Salon of 1845 signalled his breakthrough; from that moment his art became a permanent fixture in French artistic life. Although Rousseau's fame never matched that of his more illustrious contemporaries, he was firmly embedded in the artistic establishment; at the same time, he was never particularly criticised by the avant-garde. At worst, some reviewers were a bit less flattering towards the end of his career.¹⁶

As an animalier, Rousseau was most successful with his painted illustrations of La Fontaine's fables. His efforts in this field were clearly inspired by Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860) and, among 18th-century artists, more by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) than by Chardin. The earliest animal pieces in which Chardin's (albeit indirect) influence is manifest are a series of singeries from the 1860s (fig. 8). Having been popularised by David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) in the 17th century, this type of picture was revived by Chardin in the 18th (fig. 2).

Decamps, whom Goncourt dubbed ‘the finest of Chardin's artistic heirs of our day,’¹⁷ gave new life to the singerie in the 19th century, with works such as Le singe

14 Gabriel P. Weisberg, ‘Philippe Rousseau and Edwin Landseer in the context of Second Empire animal and still-life imagery,’ Arts Magazine 59 (May 1985), pp 85-88.

15 See Amsterdam 1993, pp. 8-10.

16 Ibid. p. 59.

17 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, French 18th-century painters, London 1948, p. 392.

[p. 108]

fig. 9
Philippe Rousseau, The garden bench, oil on canvas, 200.7 × 182.9 cm, Utah, Utah Museum of Fine Arts/University of Utah

peintre (Salon of 1835, Musée du Louvre, Paris) and The experts (Salon of 1839, The Metropolitan Museum, New York). Rousseau did his part to uphold the tradition. In The ape musician (fig. 8), exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1862, he amalgamated it with still life, as Chardin and Oudry had already done. In similar fashion, Chardin had combined bagpipes and sheet music in a picture in 1732; two versions of the canvas survive, both of which belonged to Parisian collections in the 19th century.¹⁸ Oudry had incorporated bagpipes in a still life a decade before Chardin; that work, too, was very popular, as evidenced by the various replicas in existence. Bagpipes were the pre-eminent pastoral instrument in the 18th century, which is precisely the connotation they have in Rousseau's large-scale Oudry pastiche, now in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City (fig. 9). Years later, at the Salon of 1877, the instrument formed the principal motif in his O ma tendre musette!!!¹⁹

Chardin's significance for Rousseau at the outset of his career is not altogether clear. In the early 1860s it was probably not particularly great. His reliance on Chardin at that time, or on a barely interrupted Chardin-tradition upheld by his followers Roland Delaporte, Thomas-Germain Divivier (1735-1814) and Anne Vallayer-Coster, needs to be studied in greater detail. Still lifes with musical instruments by both Rousseau and Bonvin seem to echo several works by the master's late-18th-century disciples.²⁰ Furthermore, it stands to reason that for an artist who started out painting animals, the animaliers Alexandre François Desportes (1661-1743) and Jean-Baptiste Oudry would have been more important than Chardin. At the Exposition Universelle of 1855, in two large dining room decorations commissioned by the French State, Rousseau had shown that he was perfectly capable of creating an elegant pastiche à la dix-huitième. He supplied Baron James de Rothschild with similar works, also largely inspired by Oudry and Desportes. The brothers Goncourt may have treated Chardin and Oudry as polar opposites in

18 See Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 6), no. 27, pp. 16, 146-47 (Instruments de musique et perroquet, Paris, private collection).

19 From the sale of his estate we know that Rousseau owned a ‘Belle Musette en ivoire avec soufflet. Epoque Louis XVI.’ See Vente après décès de l'atelier de Philippe Rousseau, Paris (H. Lechat and J. Chaine), 27 January 1888, lot 50. For another 18th-century example of bagpipes in a pastoral context see Jean-Honoré Fragonard's The musical contest in the Wallace Collection in London.

20 See, for example, Roland de la Porte's Nature morte au violon (Galerie Heim) illustrated in Connaissance des Arts (October 1975), p. 26 and Musette sur un tabouret d'osier (Galerie Heim), also illustrated in Connaissance des Arts (September 1976), p. 16.

[p. 109]

fig. 10
Philippe Rousseau, Still life with a ham, oil on canvas, 73 × 92.1 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wolfe Fund, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, 1982 (1982.320)

their articles on 18th-century art,²¹ but this did not stop Rousseau from gleaning ideas from both. His hunting pieces are clearly indebted to Oudry's ‘retours de chasse,’²² just as some of his more formal flower pieces are reminiscent of the same artist. And in an otherwise overtly Chardinesque canvas such as the splendid Still life with a ham in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (fig. 10), the prominent laurel sprig appears to derive not from Chardin, but from Desportes's Still life with dog (fig. 11).²³ Until now, Rousseau's Still life with fruit in brandy in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum²⁴ was considered the

fig. 11
François Desportes, Still life with dog, oil on canvas, 70 × 91 cm, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

earliest work in which the subject can be categorically traced to Chardin. It was said to be dated 1860, the same year some forty works by Chardin were displayed at the Galerie Martinet in Paris. Since similar preserving jars figured in two canvases in that exhibition, it seemed reasonable to assume that the inspiration for the Stedelijk's still life was to be found here. However, when the canvas was recently inspected there was no trace of a date and, given the style of the picture, it would seem to have been executed ten years later - by which time Rousseau was well under Chardin's spell.

21 Goncourt, op. cit. (note 17) p. 150: ‘Oudry work[ed] with the trivial, dull, commonplace skill that produces mere deception, and Chardin by the personal methods of genius.’

22 A copy by Rousseau after a game piece by Oudry was sold at the Nouveau Drouot in Paris on 26 September 1986 (lot 34).

23 Comparable in Chardin's oeuvre is the orange-tree branch with white flowers in the Still life with brioche of 1763 (Paris, Musée du Louvre; see Rosenberg, op. cit. [note 6], no. 118, which may have inspired another work by Rousseau (see fig. 22 in this article). The work by Chardin also influenced Manet's La brioche of 1870 (New York, The Metropolitan Museum); see exhib. cat. L'Impressionisme: les origines, Paris (Grand Palais) 1994, pp. 164-65 and Gary Tinterow, The new 19th-century European paintings and sculpture galleries, New York 1993, p. 80 (ill.).

24 See Amsterdam 1993, no. 17 and Vier Franse Meesters, cit. (note 9), no. 41.

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fig. 13
Philippe Rousseau, Chardin and his models, 1867, oil on canvas, 177.5 × 225 cm, Paris, Musée d'Orsay

fig. 12
Philippe Rousseau, The chrysanthemums, 1884, oil on canvas, 130 × 90 cm, London, Stoppenbach and Delestre Ltd.

Hommages à Chardin

Rousseau's passion for the dix-huitième was not confined to its painting. In his decorations and still lifes he constantly testified to his affection for the furniture and other decorative arts of the period. He displayed porcelain and copper work on the marble tops of elegant commodes, and arranged his bouquets against the backdrop of a gilt mirror in the Louis XVI style (fig. 12). In 1867 Rousseau paid homage to Chardin with an exceptionally monumental canvas (177.5 × 225 cm). As Courbet had done in his The studio of the painter, in the Salon piece Chardin and his models (fig. 13) Rousseau arranged a variety of objects - all of which derive from Chardin (or appear to do so) - as ‘models’ around the master's self-portrait. Even the (by now proverbial) bagpipes are included, protruding roguishly from the 18th-century bureau plat on which all the objects are displayed. The idea for this canvas, somewhat too big for its own good, may have come from the sale of Chardin's pastel self-portrait, which had been auctioned in April 1867 - the year of the painting under discussion - along with the rest of the Laperlier Collection. A copy, likewise in pastel, from the hand of Mme de Nadaillac (1825-1887), still belonged to Rousseau's estate in 1888.²⁵

25 Vente Rousseau 1888, cit. (note 19), lot 48. Furthermore this catalogue mentions a watercolour copy after Les modèles de Chardin from the hand of the Comtesse de Nadaillac. The mother of Mme de Nadaillac, Mme Delessart, was the wife of a police commissioner and mistress of the poet Prosper Mérimée. Rousseau presumably met Mme de Nadaillac at Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild's.

[p. 111]

fig. 14
Philippe Rousseau, The artist's studio, 1871, oil on canvas, 110 × 153 cm, Munich, Kunsthandel Konrad O. Bernheimer

The artist's studio (fig. 14), an allegorical still life that, as a type, is closely related to Chardin and his models, comprises attributes of both architecture and the fine arts. Dated 1871, the canvas is dedicated to Charlotte, baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild (1825-1899). As in Chardin and his models, but more prominently in this case, a palette and some brushes are shown in the foreground; these presumably refer to the artistic activities of the Baroness, who for years exhibited at the Salon and was a prominent member of the Société, des Acquafortistes. She was a pupil of Nélie Jacquemart who, together with her husband Edouard André, owned three superb Chardins (figs. 13 and 16). Charlotte herself amassed a collection of Chardins over the years, which was still further expanded by her grandson Henry de Rothschild.²⁶

fig. 15
Jean-Siméon Chardin, The attributes of science, 1731, oil on canvas, 141 × 219.5 cm, Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André

fig. 16
Jean-Siméon Chardin, The attributes of the arts, 1731, oil on canvas, 140 × 215 cm, Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André

26 Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 6), p. 78. Part of his collection was lost in a fire during World War II. A decorative piece by Rousseau, sold in 1987 as Hommage à Chardin (oil on canvas, 64 × 179 cm, Monaco [Sotheby's], 6 December 1987, lot 131), may have served as an overdoor for the Hôtel de Rothschild in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris. A palette is the central motif in that work as well, flanked by a sculpture, drawings, and a portrait of a masked lady. The canvas paraphrases an 18th-century decoration and, the title notwithstanding, has little to do with Chardin. For an illustration see Amsterdam 1993, p. 31, fig. 26.

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fig. 17
Philippe Rousseau, Les confitures, 1872, oil on canvas, 97.5 × 130.5 cm, The Netherlands, private collection

A number of elements in The artist's studio seem to have been inspired by two of the previously mentioned Chardin works which entered the Jacquemart-André collection at the time of the Laperlier sale of 1867. As in Chardin's The attributes of the arts (fig. 16), a bust at the left dominates Rousseau's composition. The sculpture, adorned with an elegant drapery, can probably be identified with Coysevoix's portrait of Le Brun.²⁷ In the background, amid rolled-up drawings, rises a characteristic Japanese vase-cornet, such as that found in Chardin's The attributes of science (fig. 15). One particularly notable motif is the gleaming yellow ribbon of an official decoration lying beside the palette. It seems to allude to Chardin's allegory of art in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.²⁸ The title of that work refers explicitly to the insignia of the Ordre de St Michael that are depicted in it: Les attributs des arts et les récompenses qui leur sont accordés. Could the decoration in Rousseau's canvas be meant to recall some honour the Baroness received?

Together with Princess Mathilde Bonaparte and Baron James de Rothschild, Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild was one of Rousseau's most illustrious clients. She owned two of his most celebrated still lifes, Les confitures and L'office, shown at the Salons of 1872 and 1873 respectively. The composition of the former canvas (fig. 17), with the

fig. 18
Jean-Siméon Chardin, The silver goblet, c. 1730, oil on canvas, 42.9 × 48.3 cm, St Louis, The Saint Louis Art Museum

copper pan and the skimmer (or écumoire) arranged diagonally, is reminiscent of similar compositions by Chardin of the 1730s. It was exhibited again at the Exposition Universelle of 1878, where it was hailed - somewhat ironically - by the critic Paul Mantz as Rousseau's masterpiece: he called it a ‘poem that will gently stir the hearts of housewives.’²⁹ The principal motif, a porcelain tureen, also figures prominently in the Still life with prunes (Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum), painted by Rousseau in 1869.³⁰

27 Examples of this bust can be found in Paris (Musée du Louvre and Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève) and London (Wallace Collection). See François Souchal, French sculptors of the 17th and 18th centuries: the reign of Louis XIV, 4 vols. Oxford 1977-93, vol. 1, pp. 176-77. I am grateful to Claudia Schellekens, Amsterdam for the identification.

28 Rosenberg op. cit. (note 6), no. 125, pp. 344-47.

29 Paul Mantz quoted in Lefort, op. cit. (note 12), p. 138. The Salon piece of 1872 subsequently entered the museum in Dieppe, before being acquired by the Dutch dealers Huinck and Hoogendijk. It is now probably still in a Dutch private collection.

30 See Amsterdam 1993, no. 6. For the motif of the tureen there are also numerous precedents in Chardin's oeuvre: see Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 6), nos. 103, 104, 114, 118 and 122.

The lessons of Chardin

Meanwhile the Chardins belonging to La Caze had entered the Louvre as a bequest. Rousseau is said to have been transfixed by Chardin's early, still somewhat Desportes-like Le buffet (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Yet the compositions of, and motifs in, his still lifes - the preserving

[p. 113]

fig. 19
Philippe Rousseau, Still life with peaches, prunes, grapes and a silver tureen, oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm, whereabouts unknown (formerly Alfred Brod, London)

jars, the silver goblet, the open drawer - are evidence that he was no less susceptible to such canvases as Le bocal d'olives (Paris, Musée du Louvre), La table d'office (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and The silver gobelet (fig. 18).

Rousseau himself owned at least three still lifes by Chardin. The aforementioned Silver goblet, now in The St Louis Art Museum, was in his possession briefly between 1867 and 1873. Chardin's Nature morte avec un quartier de côtelettes of 1732, which was lot 32 in the posthumous sale of Rousseau's studio in 1888, is now one of the masterpieces of the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.³¹ It previously belonged to the famous Chardin collection of Camille Marcille (1816-1876), which was sold in 1876. A third Chardin, Maqueraux attachés avec quelques brins de paille et accrochés à un mur, was listed in the catalogue of the Rousseau sale of 1885 as a ‘belle esquisse.’³²

What Rousseau most admired in Chardin's art was the great intimacy and loving accuracy with which he rendered different textures. The critic Haussard had praised Rousseau's Salon submission of 1846 for its ‘observation rare et fine,’ ‘délicatesse des formes’ and ‘subtilité de la touche.’³³ While the line and colour of his early still lifes had occasionally been rather hard, the lessons he learned from Chardin in the 1860s enabled Rousseau to achieve a more distinguished palette and composition. Like his eminent model, he preferred backgrounds that harmonised in grey, brown, and green tones, thus creating the ton neutre he desired. In imitation of Chardin, moreover, Rousseau was fond of arranging objects on a table or plinth, parallel to the edge of the canvas. The marble top of an 18th-century commode often served this purpose (fig. 19).

31 See Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 6), p. 43, fig. 42. The canvas was sold in 1876 as lot 16 in the Vente Marcille, and acquired by Baron Henry de Rothschild. La Caze also owned a version of this work, the authenticity of which has been questioned.

32 Catalogue des tableaux, études et esquisses par Philippe Rousseau, Paris (Drouot: Paul Chevalier & E. Féral), 27 March 1885, lot 29.

33 La Nation, 12 May 1846.

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fig. 20
Philippe Rousseau, Still life with melon, oil on canvas, 98 × 130.5 cm,
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (on permanent loan from the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst)

Rousseau felt just as much at home in the field of Chardin's austere kitchen and hunting still lifes as he did in that of allegories, ostentatious still lifes, and richly laid tables. One such ambitious canvas is the Still life with melon (fig. 20), which the Van Gogh Museum received on permanent loan in 1991.³⁴ The background with floral motifs is similar to that in the Still life with a ham in The Metropolitan Museum, New York (fig. 10), but unfortunately neither canvas is dated. Against the background of a chest containing a gilt dinner service, we see a variety of objects and fruit arranged on a marble table top. The principal motif is a carved melon in a silver chalice. Chardin had depicted this motif (Le melon entamé, Paris, private collection) as well, albeit on a much smaller scale. The other objects shown are, from left to right, a silver covered dish, three peaches, a sugar sprinkler, the key to the wine cellar, and an assortment of bottles, including preserving jars filled with cherries and peaches. Rousseau signed his canvas by ‘embroidering’ his monogram in red on the napkin. Still more peaches - a fruit whose soft skin has tempted so many still-life painters - are piled high in a scalloped blue Meissen bowl trimmed with gold.

34 Inv. S 66 B/1991, on loan from Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst since 1991. For a related work by Chardin see Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 6), no. 111, pp. 29, 316-18.

Pastels

Among Chardin's most intimate works are several pastels the artist executed toward the end of his life, mostly portraits of himself and his wife. Goncourt described these works as nothing less than ‘the supreme triumph of the elderly painter.’³⁵ As we have seen, the pastel self-portrait formed the centrepiece of the composition of Rousseau's Chardin and his models (fig. 13).

From the 1850s Rousseau, too, often worked in pastel, primarily for flower studies and still lifes, genres in which Chardin himself had never employed the medium. Although Rousseau's pastels appear on the market only sporadically, he must have executed a considerable number of them.³⁶ There were eight at the studio sale held following his death, among them studies of fruit and birds, as well as designs for a folding screen. The pastel Still life

35 Goncourt, op. cit. (note 17), p. 142. Vincent van Gogh was particularly impressed by Goncourt's remarks about the technique of Chardin's self-portrait: ‘Comment surprendre - comment dire de quoi est faite cette bouche démeublée qui a d'infinies délicatesses, Cela n'est fait que de quelques traînées de jaune et de quelques balayures de bleu!!!’; see De brieven van Vincent van Gogh, ed. Han van Crimpen and Monique Berends-Albert, 4 vols, The Hague 1990, letter 542/431, c. 8-12 November 1885.

36 See Amsterdam 1993, pp. 55-57.

[p. 115]

fig. 21
Philippe Rousseau, Still life with peaches, Pastel on paper, 73 × 92 cm,
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, gift of Nederlandse Gasunie

with peaches (fig. 21) that was donated to the Van Gogh Museum in 1990 can almost certainly be identified with a work sold at posthumous sale of 1888. The subject and dimensions of lot 17, a pastel entitled Pêches au vin, correspond perfectly. The work fetched no less than 770 francs - a respectable sum indeed in those days.

What makes this pastel so impressive is the distinguished simplicity of the composition and its serene emptiness. There is nothing on the white linen tablecloth except some peaches, a bowl, a porcelain plate of peaches, a silver goblet, a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew. Although the silver goblet forms the pivot on which the composition turns, the most striking feature is, once again, a blue bowl with a gilt scalloped edge. When the pastel was auctioned in 1968, this object was described as a ‘metal jardinière’; the gallery through which the Museum acquired the work in 1990, however, called it a Sèvres bowl.³⁷ As in Still life with melon (fig. 20) and The artist's studio (fig. 14), the bowl is piled high with ‘the shaggy velvet of the peach.’³⁸ Rousseau depicted the same object on several other occasions, using it as a cooler for champagne and glasses, or what is called a

37 Inv. D 1008 M/1990. Two related still lifes with peaches and a silver goblet - but without a bowl - are known: Still life with fruit, dated 1886, oil on canvas, 43 x 58.5 cm, London (Sotheby's) 4 May 1988, lot 182; and Still life with peaches, undated, oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm, formerly collection H.E. ten Cate, Almelo.

38 Goncourt, op. cit. (note 17), p. 115.

[p. 116]

fig. 22
Philippe Rousseau, Still life with brioche and champagne, oil on panel, 53 × 65 cm, whereabouts unknown (photograph courtesy of Rob Noortman, London)

verrière.³⁹ The object may not occur in Chardin's work, but it does have strong 18th-century associations. It appears in half a dozen of Rousseau's pictures and, to judge from the visual evidence, the artist had at least two different exemplars at his disposal. The bowls in Still life with melon and the pastel in the Van Gogh Museum appear to be identical: they are blue, and the trim and decoration are gilt. In both cases, however, the image is difficult to read. Similar bowls appear in a still life of 1869 (London, private collection) and in the Still life with brioche and champagne that was on the London market around 1982 (fig. 22) - the latter decorated with a chinoiserie in a cartouche with a light background.⁴⁰ The small silver goblet which often figures in Chardin still lifes from the late 1760s on, intrigued many a 19th-century imitator. Goncourt's remark that ‘A silver goblet and a bit of fruit are all it takes to create an admirable work’⁴¹ certainly applies to Rousseau's pastel. Officially, the goblet is called a timbale tulipe à piédouche.⁴² Not only Rousseau but also Bonvin included this austere

fig. 23
Jules de Goncourt, Le goblet d'argent (after Chardin), 1863, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale

cup, with its distinguished gleam, in several still lifes (fig. 3).⁴³ Goncourt admired Chardin's rendering of the object and gave a lyrical description of it in his L'art du XVIIIme siècle: ‘The brilliance, the sheen of the goblet is rendered with a few touches of stencilled, impasted white, while in the shadows there is a multitude of tones and colours, threads of an almost violet blue, streaks of red which are the reflections of cherries against the goblet, and there is a reddish-brown, faded and as though stamped in the shadow of the metal, and points of yellowish-red playing among touches of Prussian blue. There is, that is to say, a continual recall of the circumambient colours glancing over the polished surface of the goblet.’⁴⁴ At the Salon of 1863 Jules de Goncourt exhibited an etching of the detail of the silver goblet (fig. 23) in Chardin's still life in St Louis (fig. 18).

39 For a typical verrière see Connaissance des Arts (September 1976), p. 45.

40 Oil on panel, 52.5 × 76.5 cm, dated 1869, London, Collection Hofland, and London, Art Gallery Noortman, c. 1982. The last work is possibly identical with Brioche et champagne, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1885 under no. 2145.

41 Goncourt, op. cit. (note 17), p. 116.

42 See Connaissance des Arts (March 1969), p. 111, and Connaissance des Arts (November 1976), p. 152.

43 See also Amsterdam 1993, p. 43, fig. 43.

44 See note 41.

‘Mon vrai maître’

Shortly before his death in 1887 Rousseau was interviewed by Paul Eudel. ‘Ah!,’ exclaimed the artist at one point, ‘Chardin, that great painter, that marvellous artist,

[p. 117]

the king of realists [...]. If you want to please me,’ he continued, ‘speak of Chardin [...]. He is my true master, and one can never be too enthusiastic about that man, once so disdained, whose work has only been known and admired again for such a short time. Chardin is not only one of the purest glories of France, but of Art in general.’⁴⁵ Rousseau's obituary in the Courrier de l'Art declared that ‘French art has just lost its modern Chardin.’⁴⁶

At the Salon of 1864 Rousseau exhibited a Lièvre morte (whereabouts unknown) that reminded the critic Théophile Thoré of Chardin. In 1887, the year of his death, the artist finished Still life with game (fig. 24), which seems to be a résumé of his passion for Chardin.⁴⁷ Presented to the Van Gogh Museum by the Friends in 1993, it combines the artist's two great loves, the still life and the animal piece. The work comprises familiar motifs such as the silver goblet, the dark bottle, and Chardin's intriguing halfopen drawer. The combination of dead game and copper work distinguishes many canvases by Chardin, but as usual Rousseau did not borrow a single motif directly. Although he observed every object in the light of Chardin, the touching attitude of the lifeless rabbit in the foreground is entirely his own. It attests to a certain inventiveness within the framework of a tradition that had, in fact, originated centuries before Chardin.

fig. 24
Philippe Rousseau, Still life with game, 1887, oil on canvas, 115.5 × 88.5 cm, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

45 From Paul Eudel, L'Hôtel Drouot et la curiosité en 1887-1888, Paris 1889, quoted in Rosenberg op. cit. (note 6), p. 168: ‘Chardin le grand peintre, le merveilleux artiste, le roi des réalistes [...]. Si vous désirez m'être agréable parlez de Chardin [...]. C'est mon vrai maître celui-là et l'on ne prononcera jamais d'éloges assez enthousiastes sur ce dédaigné qu'on connaît et qu'on admire sincèrement depuis si peu de temps. Et cependant Chardin est une des plus pures gloires non seulement de la France mais de l'Art entier.’

46 ‘Nécrologie - Ph. Rousseau,’ Courrier de l'Art (1887), p. 392.

47 Acquired by the Van Gogh Museum in 1993 from Art Gallery Noortman bv., Maastricht. Inv. S 441 M/1993. For Thoré's review see Théophile Thoré, Salons de William Burger, 1861-1868, 2 vols, Paris 1870, vol. 2, p. 119.