Austen, Chekhov, Ozu, Hopper, Chardin

Chardin, The Silver Beaker
oil on canvas, c. 1750
Musée du Louvre
(source: wikiart)
no copyright infringement intended

An English novelist from the Regency times, a Russian playwright and short-stories author living at the end of the 19th century, a Japanese director of the 1930s/40s/50s, and an American painter contemporary with the Japanese. Do they have something in common? Is it for them a proximate genus? Then what are their specific differences? The universe they are dealing with in their works is up to a point similar: a thin section sliced with peculiar attention in the medium to lower level of gentility or bourgeoisie/intelligentsia, mixed with all kind of picturesque guys, like perpetual students aspiring sometimes to the status of small clerics or clergymen (it depends on the epoch), plus one or more wise and rather skeptical doctors or professors, or other enigmatic individuals (sometimes on the brink of failure). And this universe is explored with great empathy and nobility, and with tireless dedication. Their approach is not demiurgical, like at so many other creators; they let their personages to play by themselves, the situations to evolve freely; and they, the creators, are just there, on the side, enjoying the uniqueness of some moments, all other times just admiring the holiness of the mundane, and meditating maybe, at the ways life goes on.

And maybe the French rococo painter is not too far (if not for the universe, at least for the approach).



(Jane Austen)

(Chekhov)

(Yasujiro Ozu and Setsuko Hara)

(Hopper)

(Chardin)

Chardin: The Attentive Nurse

Chardin: The Attentive Nurse
oil on canvas, 1747
Washington DC National Gallery of Art
(http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=41649&image=6782&c=)
no copyright infringement intended

Through the simple action depicted here, Chardin reveals dignity and beauty in everyday life. The woman's expression as she concentrates on her task suggests that her thoughts are elsewhere, perhaps with the invalid whose meal she is preparing (Chardin lost his first wife and young daughter to illness). Each object receives careful treatment from the artist's brush. The table setting is a harmony of white tones: jug, tablecloth, egg, and plate, each subtly different. Every pot, each piece of crockery is palpably present. As Diderot wrote of Chardin, it is not white, red, or black pigment that you mix on your palette, it is the very substance of objects. Chardin's modest subjects—like this and that of the Kitchen Maid—were extremely popular with all classes of society, including the aristocracy. Perhaps their appeal rested in their sense of order, of things in their proper place. Chardin anticipated the popularity of paintings of sensibility, which increased from the 1740s on, telling a colleague that one uses color, but one paints with sentiment.

(NGA)

(Chardin)

(Diderot)

Chardin: The Little Schoolmistress

Chardin: The Little Schoolmistress
oil on canvas, after 1740
Washington DC National Gallery of Art
(http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=98&image=639&c=)
no copyright infringement intended

(Chardin)

Chardin: The Kitchen Maid

Jean Siméon Chardin, The Kitchen Maid
oil on canvas, 1738
Washington DC National Gallery of Art
(http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=41650&image=6789&c=)
no copyright infringement intended

We stop in front of a Chardin as if by instinct, like a traveler weary of the road choosing, almost without realizing, a place that offers a grassy seat, silence, water and cool shade.

(Diderot, Salon of 1767)

• The Little Schoolmistress
• The Attentive Nurse
• The Silver Beaker (Austen, Chekhov, Ozu, Hopper, Chardin)

(Washington DC National Gallery of Art)

(Diderot)

(Old Masters)