Basket of Plums

The subject couldn’t be much humbler: a wicker basket heaped with plums and placed on a stone ledge amid a scattering of walnuts, cherries, and currants. In an era when French painting was known for its grandeur and decorative embellishments, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin ’s still lifes and genre scenes were renowned for their simplicity and directness. Though considered too modest to be ranked alongside the extravagant works of François Boucher , Chardin’s paintings charmed many of his contemporaries. The great Paris intellectual Denis Diderot praised Chardin for his truthfulness and unassuming poetry—the very qualities that captivate us today.

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