The Kitchen Maid

1738

Jean Siméon Chardin

Painter, French, 1699 - 1779

A young woman, holding a knife and vegetable in her lap and wearing a clay-brown jacket over a long, poppy-red skirt, sits on a wooden ladderback chair angled to our right in the center of this vertical painting. She has pale skin with cheeks and lips flushed deep pink. A white cap covers her upswept hair, and a sea-blue and tan neckerchief drapes around her neck. She hunches forward slightly and gazes to our right with parted lips. Her hands rest in her lap, and she holds a knife in her right hand and a white root vegetable in her left. Her lap is draped with an ivory-white cloth, speckled with tan spots that continue onto the hem of her red skirt and the floor. A copper-brown bowl with a flaring lip and a peacock-blue interior sits on the floor at her feet with several irregular white shapes lying inside, presumably peeled vegetables. To her left, our right, is a log-like section of a thick tree trunk with a cleaver embedded in it. The handle of a copper pan leans against the block. The bottom of that pan is propped up against a deep blue-gray bowl with a gold-colored interior. Light coming from the upper left gleams on the edges of the cookware and illuminates a spatter of tomato red on the surface of the chopping block. In the lower left, a handful of dirt-brown tubers are piled near an orange pumpkin or gourd, which is cut off by the edge of the painting. The floor and wall behind the woman are peanut brown washed with thin layers of slate blue. The artist signed and dated the painting in black on the wall above the chopping block, “Chardin 1738.”

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 53

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 46.2 x 37.5 cm (18 3/16 x 14 3/4 in.)
    framed: 61.9 x 53.7 x 7.3 cm (24 3/8 x 21 1/8 x 2 7/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1952.5.38

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Acquired from the artist by Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein [1696-1772, Austrian ambassador to France, 1737-1741]; by descent through the Princes of Liechtenstein to Prince Franz Josef II von und zu Liechtenstein [1906-1989], Vienna and later Vaduz, until at least 1948; (Frederick Mont, Inc., New York); purchased 8 March 1951 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[1] gift 1952 to NGA.
[1] Invoice from Frederick Mont to the Kress Foundation, copy in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2218.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1739

  • Salon, Paris, 1739, unnumbered catalogue.

1907

  • Chardin et Fragonard, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1907, no. 22, as La Cuisiniere.

1910

  • Ausstellung von Werken französischer Kunst des XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Königliche Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1910, no. 308, as Eine Köchin, Rüben schälend (no. 25 in French ed.).

1948

  • Meisterwerke aus den Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein, Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, 1948, no. 8, as Die Rübenschälerin.

1997

  • Intimate Encounters: Love and Domesticity in 18th-century France, Hood Museum of Aart, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1997-1998, no. 16, repro.

1999

  • Chardin, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf; Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1999-2000, no. 57, repro., as The Turnip Peeler (shown only in Paris and Düsseldorf).

2003

  • The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Altes Museum, Berlin, 2003-2004, no. 37, repro.

Bibliography

1929

  • Osborn, Max. Die Kunst des Rokoko. Berlin, 1929: repro. 184, 611.

1933

  • Wildenstein, Georges. Chardin. Paris, 1933: 159, no. 46, pl. 34, fig. 45.

1952

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Interpreting Masterpieces: Twenty-four Paintings from the Kress Collection." Art News Annual 16 (1952): 128-129, repro. 123.

1957

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): 45, 50, pl. 117, 129.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 354, repro.

  • Cooke, Hereward Lester. French Paintings of the 16th-18th Centuries in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Four in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 42, color repro. on cover.

1961

  • Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 180, color repro. pl. 174.

1962

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Treasures from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1962: 108, color repro.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 317, repro.

  • Wildenstein, Georges. Chardin. Zurich, 1963: 170-171, no. 168, fig. 75.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 27.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 2:306, color repro.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 19, repro.

1969

  • Wildenstein, Georges. Chardin: catalogue raisonné. Revised by Daniel Wildenstein; translated by Stuart Gilbert. Oxford, 1969: 178-179, no. 168, fig. 75.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 68, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 311-313, fig. 278.

1983

  • Rosenberg, Pierre. L'opera completa di Chardin. Milan, 1983: no. 116, pl. 28.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 323, no. 425, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 87, repro.

1986

  • Conisbee, Philip. Chardin. Oxford, 1986: 128-131, pl. 121.

1987

  • Laskin, Myron, and Michael Pantazzi. European and American Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts: Catalogue of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. vol.1, 1987: 74-76.

1990

  • Fried, Michael. Courbet's Realism. Chicago, 1990:8-9, repro.

1991

  • Démoris, René. Chardin, la chair et l'object. Paris, 1991:81, 93, 106, 125-126, detail color repro. on cover.

1994

  • Roland Michel, Marianne. Chardin. Paris. 1994: 41, 44, 68, 70, 122, 160, 209, 213, 249, 261, color repro. 42.

1995

  • Edizel, Gerar. "Jean-Siméon Chardin: Seeing, Playing, Forgetting, and the Practice of Modern Imitation." Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1995:81-83, fig. 14.

  • Jollet, Etienne. Chardin: La vie silencieuse. Paris, 1995: 38, color repro.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 250, no. 199, color repro.

2005

  • Démoris, René. "Inside/Interiors: Chardin's Images of the Family." Art History 28, no. 4 (September 2005): 455-457.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 14, 75-79, color repro.

2010

  • Ledbury, Mark. "Embracing and Escaping the Material: Genre Painting, Objects and Private Life in Eighteenth-Century France." In Andrew Kahn, ed. Representing Private Lives of the Enlightenment, Oxford, 2010: 202, fig. 9.

2021

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. "In Pursuit of Masterpieces: The National Gallery of Art's Acquisitions from The Prince of Liecthenstein." Artibus et historiae 42, no. 83 (2021): 317, 318, color fig. 6, 329 n.15.

Inscriptions

center right: Chardin / 1738
On stretcher: oval label, "EIGENTHUM/S'D. Fürst Johann/von u. zu Lichtenstein/369"; rectangular label, "Kunstmuseum Luzen 1948/Meisterwere aus/den Sammlungen des Fürsten von Lichtenstein/Katalog Nr. 8"

Wikidata ID

Q20177902

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