Title: Still Life, Fish

Artist: Siméon Chardin

Still Life with Fish, Vegetables, Gougères, Pots, and Cruets on a Table Artist: Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779) Date: 1769 Medium: Oil on canvas Text: The combination of thickly applied pigment and thin, smooth glazes animates this simple depiction of everyday objects. Chardin's vigorous brushwork, evident in the scales of the hanging mackerel, evokes a freedom that contradicts his characteristically laborious working method. An insightful observation of nature, this work was imbued with a solemnity that elevated the genre of still-life painting from the low stature it occupied in the eighteenth century.