Kitchen Utensils with Leeks, Fish, and Eggs (c. 1734): Art, History and Details

Kitchen Utensils with Leeks, Fish, and Eggs (c. 1734) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Chardin was already famous by 1730, when he began to paint small, sparse still lifes of kitchen utensils. He often used the same elements in his compositions, varying slightly the position of the objects and adding or subtracting a utensil—always carefully placing each in relation to the rest to achieve a balanced design. Chardin was the contemporary of François Boucher (1703–1770) and he taught Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), but his work is a contrast to theirs, representing the naturalistic tendency that persisted alongside the more fashionable lightness, grace, and playfulness of the Rococo. Chardin discovered a hidden poetry in even the most humble objects, bringing the viewer into an earthly world experienced with directness and simplicity.

Object facts

• Title: Kitchen Utensils with Leeks, Fish, and Eggs
• Date: c. 1734
• Creator attribution: Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 52.5 x 60.5 x 7.5 cm (20 11/16 x 23 13/16 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 32.2 x 40.7 cm (12 11/16 x 16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.37

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Rosenberg, Pierre, Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, and Sally W. Goodfellow. Chardin, 1699-1779: A Special Exhibition Organized by the Réunion Des Musées Nationaux, Paris, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1979.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (1981).
• Gazette des Beaux Arts, (March 1981).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.