Wild Strawberries

Although the strawberries are plentiful, their unit price – considering their price tag of 20 million euros, the record-breaking sum attained at an Artcurial auction on March 23 of this year – is dizzying. They are arranged as a pièce montée ready to be set out for a lavish banquet; but spread out around them are an unassuming glass of water, two flowers, and three pieces of fruit. What strikes the eye is the harmonious balance between the monumental basket and the apparently careless, distracted spontaneity that dominates the rest of the composition. Marcel Proust invited us to “listen” to the paintingof Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), to heed it as “a lesson.” Perhaps that is the key: Chardin is not only a great painter, he is also a Maestro, in his ability to imbue the humblest of subjects with the greatest spiritual elegance, and in his devotion to a genre – the still life – considered at the time to be less prestigious and less important.