Nature morte au chaudron de cuivre

On a plain wooden shelf against a dim grey-brown wall stand the homely utensils of an eighteenth-century kitchen: a copper cauldron with its great arched handle tipped back on the board, a wooden mortar with its pestle, a shallow earthenware bowl, two onions and a small knife — objects of no worth transformed by the quietest, most scrupulous painting into a meditation on light and substance. Jean-Siméon Chardin, the supreme still-life painter of his age, made such kitchen pieces throughout his career; the Cognacq-Jay example, painted about 1735 on a small panel and signed on the table’s edge, shows his gift for giving the humblest metal and clay a grave, absorbing presence. The painting is held in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, le goût du XVIIIe, Paris.