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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