Jean Siméon Chardin’s 1760 portray The Reduce Melon is formally headed to the Kimbell Artwork Museum in Fort Price, Texas, after a failed try to win it at public sale.
Final June, the Chardin portray set a brand new file for the artist when it bought for $30.3 million at Christie’s France to then-unknown Italian actual property investor Nanni Bassani Antivari. On the time, it appeared like a disappointing miss for the Kimbell Artwork Museum, who was the underbidder on the work.
In 2022, the museum had tried and failed to amass Chardin’s Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761), after France declared the work a nationwide treasure, permitting the Louvre to step in to buy the work for its assortment.
However then, this previous December, the Artwork Newspaper revealed that not solely had Antivari not paid for The Reduce Melon, however that Christie’s was suing him for non-payment. Whereas that case has not but been settled, the way forward for The Reduce Melon has.
On Wednesday, the Kimbell introduced that it had acquired the work instantly from the portray’s house owners, the descendants of Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild, an arts patron who acquired the work in 1876.
In an interview with ARTnews, museum director Eric Lee known as the portray and Basket of Wild Strawberries the “two most necessary Chardin nonetheless lifes that have been nonetheless in non-public palms.”
“In my view, The Reduce Melon is totally as fantastic as [Basket of Wild Strawberries]. I simply couldn’t be extra thrilled to have the ability to purchase it,” Lee mentioned. “I used to be so unhappy after we misplaced the portray at public sale and when this got here again round it was almot like a miracle. The portray is so proper for the gathering. It appears prefer it’s all the time been right here and it appears unattainable to assume of the Kimbell with out this portray.”
Painted on a uncommon oval canvas practically two toes huge, the nonetheless life options, in Lee’s estimation, a “complicated composition” of rounded types anchored by a vivid orange wedge of cantaloupe poised atop the uncovered core of a sliced melon. The portray goes on view Thursday within the museum’s Louis I. Kahn constructing.
“You don’t see orange that usually in Outdated Grasp portray work, and I do know Kahn was very eager on the colour, so it’s good to have the ability to convey orange again into the galleries,” Lee mentioned. “That is the one portray there the place orange could be very outstanding.”
Lee mentioned that the museum doesn’t sometimes make acquisitions to “fill gaps” in its assortment, nevertheless it needed to, within the case of The Reduce Melon, as a result of nonetheless lifes are a weak spot on the Kimbell. Previous to the Chardin acquisition, the museum had nonetheless lifes by Jacques de Gheyn and Luis Egidio Meléndez, although it lately acquired one by Anne Vallayer-Coster and one other by Louise Moillon.. The museum at present has only one different Chardin work, Younger Scholar Drawing (ca. 1738).
“We’ve been strengthening the gathering, however then with these different nonetheless lifes, the evident absence was a serious Chardin,” Lee mentioned. “The quiet stillness of the portray simply resonates with the quiet stillness of Louis Kahn’s galleries. The structure and the portray complement one another so nicely.”
