Proust and Old Time: On ‘Chardin’ and ‘Watteau’
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/oxartj/kcw013
ISSN1741-7287
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Poetry
ResumoThe tracks of Marcel Proust’s admiration for Jean-Siméon Chardin are to be found in a short ‘philosophical essay’, which he wrote in 1895 but that was published only as late as 1954. Written when Proust turned 23, it is credited by Jean-Yves Tadié as the writer’s ‘first important piece of art criticism’ (Proust was later to essay articles on Watteau, Rembrandt, Monet, and Gustave Moreau, before eventually assimilating the genre of art writing into his genre-abolishing novel In Search of Lost Time ). 1 In it, Proust cites several of Chardin’s paintings – The Diligent Mother , The Skate , and, most extensively, two late pastel Self-Portraits ; works that he encountered during his youthful forays in the eighteenth-century galleries of the Louvre, accompanied by his friends (and lover of the time Reynaldo Hahn). 2 There is one painting by Chardin, which never entered the Louvre collection and remains unmentioned by him in the essay: A Lady Taking Tea ( Fig. 1 ), dated 1735 and in the Hunterian collection in Glasgow since the eighteenth century, might be taken as especially Proustian. An image of a woman’s rêverie , or daydreaming, it best evokes the intimately reflective state adopted by Proust when confronted by the old painter, as well as measuring their vast distance. 3
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