Food - Bee Wilson develops an appetite for Chardin's still lifes
Even raw kidneys are beautiful when painted by Chardin. They become shining pairs of purple-brown. From across the room, they might be black grapes or plums. But close up, their anatomical nature is unmistakable. As part of The Meat Day Meal, along with a slab of meat on a hook and dark red wine, these kidneys are somehow, surprisingly, luxuriant. You can't associate such plump delicacies with the poor offal of a butcher's shop, though they are realistic down to the core. You want to pick them straight off the canvas, but you also want to leave them just where they are, looking immaculate.
The Chardin exhibition now at the Royal Academy of Arts in London is a delight for anyone who enjoys looking at food as much as eating it. Jean Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) was one of the finest observers of fruit and dead animals who ever painted. At the start of his career, this talent was something of an obstacle. When he was accepted into the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture at the age of 27, still life was seen as a lesser form of art. Chardin's delicate masterpieces of peach, pear and plum were to change this utterly.
At the salon of 1763, the philosopher Denis Diderot rhapsodised over Chardin's picture of "an old Chinese porcelain vessel, two biscuits, a jar full of olives, a bowl of fruit, two glasses half-filled with wine, a Seville orange and a pie". It was the honesty that Diderot loved: "For this porcelain bowl is made of real porcelain; these olives really do look as if they are floating in water; these biscuits are just waiting to be picked up and eaten; this Seville orange to be split open and squeezed; this glass of wine to be drunk; this fruit to be peeled; this pie to be cut into."
Chardin appealed to the nature-loving tendencies of Enlightenment France. Breadcrumbs, peach stones, a melon slice, half-eaten jars of apricots, tea-cups with spoons poking out, green almonds, cats pawing oysters and nurses peeling hard-boiled eggs all give the illusion of careless, everyday life - but it is always stage-managed down to the last crease in a white tablecloth. In Silver Goblet, Peach, White and Red Grapes and Apple (1726-8), there are three stray grapes, which might have fallen off their ledge by accident, were it not for the clever way that their colours (two white, one black) enhance Chardin's chiaroscuro technique.
Chardin appreciates the order of the kitchen and its battery of implements. Skate and rabbits are brutally hung from hooks. A plumy partridge poses with a Seville orange, perhaps in anticipation of its final saucing. In The Fast-Day Meal (1731), the contents of a Lenten shopping bag are laid out ready for cooking: two white eggs, two drooping leeks, three hanging herrings. Even though they are static, Chardin's pictures can be full of suspense. You see the ingredients, the copper pans, the pestle and mortar and serving dishes, but what you really want to know is how it will all be cooked. Will the eggs become an omelette? Will those wild strawberries go into a tart? At times, the exhibition feels like food in search of a recipe. So here is one.
Chardin, 1699-1779 is at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London W1 until 29 May
Biscuits
This is Diderot's recipe from the Encyclopedie. Good in smaller quantities. "Take eight eggs, break them all into a dish, beat them, throw in half a pound of powdered sugar, the same amount of flour, rather less than more; mix; make a white batter, well beaten and with no lumps, sprinkle in a bit of orange-flower water as you beat; have lozenge shaped or rectangular tin moulds [try madeleine tins]; grease them lightly with butter, pour in your batter, sprinkle with sugar, put in the oven [170 C for 20-30 minutes] . . . after cooking, glaze with powdered sugar and leave to get cold. Serve with two green apples, one cherry and a glass of water."
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