The White Tablecloth

Museum record 51577: The White Tablecloth by Jean Siméon Chardin. A verified entry point for discovery.

What to notice

For The White Tablecloth (record 51577), start with modern, expressive, atmospheric. Compare the focal subject, edge treatment, and atmosphere before moving on.

Discover

Jean Siméon Chardin won acclaim for the still lifes and quiet scenes of middle-class domestic life that he exhibited at salons sponsored by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In early still lifes like this one, he incorporated motifs common to 17th-century Dutch and Flemish works: the foreshortened knife, the handle of which protrudes over the table’s edge; the overturned glass; and the remains of a meal. The work’s unusual shape reveals its original function as a screen for the opening…