New paintings at Waddesdon Manor
The collections at Waddesdon have been enhanced by the recent acquisition of four major paintings, by Callet, Chardin and Panini, described here by Juliet Carey.
Juliet Carey, Monday, 25th August 2008
This was probably one of the paintings that Chardin showed to his colleagues at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1735, when he put his name forward for the position of officier de l’Académie.10 Probably shown at the Paris Salon of 1737, it may have been intended as a pendant to Woman Taking Tea (1735, but not exhibited until the Salon of 1739, Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, Glasgow), with which it has compositional affinities and was associated in the 1765 sale.11 Prints after the painting were made soon after its creation. Pierre Fillœuil’s engraving amplifies its moralising note with a little verse about how old men should not mock the young since their schemes can be quite as insubstantial. A series of four etchings by Antoine Marcenay de Ghuy draws out the Rembrandtesque melancholy that several contemporary viewers found in Chardin’s genre paintings.12
18th- and 19th-century commentators often discussed Chardin’s genre paintings and still-lifes in terms of 17th-century Netherlandish works, so it is appropriate that Boy Building a House of Cards joins a collection rich in such works, by Gerrit Dou, Gerard Ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu, several with distinguished French 18th-century provenances. It also prompts a reassessment of the belief that the Rothschilds did not buy works by Chardin: research will focus in particular on a group of Chardins owned by Henri de Rothschild (1872-1947), most of which were burnt in a fire during World War II.
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