The Kitchen Maid in European painting: 17th – 18th century

Introduction

When I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, I saw Chardin’s “The Kitchen Maid”. This painting became the trigger for this post. I have written in the past about Chardin’s food and kitchen paintings.
Today’s theme belongs to “genre painting”, which depicted scenes from everyday life, both high and low. The artist Samuel von Hoogstraten in his “Introduction to the elevated school of painting” (1678) defines three “grades” of painting: still ife painting at the lowest level, history  painting at the highest, and genre painting occupying the middle ground. The term “genre” painting itself was not used until the end of the 18th century by the French writer Quatremere de Quincy (Genre Painting in Northern Europe, Jennifer Meagher Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
The period covered in the post ends at the beginning of the industrial revolution which changed the real and painted world.
Anthony Oberman – Kitchen Maid, detail

The Kitchen Maid in the Household

The kitchen maid was a domestic servant at the bottom of the social structure. As an example of social pre-industrial structure, in the 17th century the English society had four layers, descending from nobility and upper gentry down through the professional and merchant classes, the yeomanry and finally to the common people (labourers, husbandmen, artificers and servants) (quoted in Jane Holmes, Domestic Service in Yprkshire, 1650 – 1780. Ph. D. Thesis, University of York, 1989.).
In the hierarchy of domestic servants, the kitchen maid was an under cook. In the countryhousereader I found the following descriptions of the relevant jobs in England.
Kitchen maid/Cook maid. Often very skilled women or with the ambition to be so, they were part of the team of females overseeing everything in the kitchen department from cleanliness and efficiency to food preparation as well as answering to the demands of the dining table on a daily basis. (Wage: 18thcentury – £4; 19th century – £14; 20th century – £25)
 Dairy maid. The 18th century image of a buxom maiden flirting with stable boys or the tenant farmer’s son added to the romance of the dairy maid and her rural freedoms. In reality she stood to support the network of employees connected with country house self-sufficiency. A woman in this job knew how to churn butter, to recognise the perfect creams for eating and how best to use the milky by-products for a variety of ingredients in the kitchen. This role became less crucial to the country house structure by the 20th century due to the impact of large-scale dairy farming and the ease at which produce could be bought from the open market. (Wage: 18th century – £5; 19th century £12; 20th century – £15)

Scullery maid. A country house maid-of-all-work whose routine revolved around supporting the kitchen maids with fetching and carrying, scrubbing, washing and scouring pots, pans and the kitchen generally! Her duties consisted of whatever the other staff (mainly the kitchen maids) thought fit within that department. (Wage: 18th century – £2 10s; 19th century £6; 20th century – £12)

 Painting the Kitchen Maid – Themes

The post is structured along four themes:
  • Scenes with religious backgrounds
  • The kitchen scene
  • The beautiful maid
  • The solitary figure
 The use of a religious story in the background of a kitchen scene gos back to the 16th century.
Starting with a picture painted by Joachim Bueckelaer in the middle of the 16th century, I continue with an engraving by Jacob Matham which clearly features the kitchen maid / kitchen scene theme with a biblical scene in the background. The theme concludes with the three paintings by Velazquez that have a kitchen scene with a kitchen maid as their subject.
In the second section I present a kitchen scene painted by a Dutch painter and in the third two paintings that focus on the aesthetic, sensual, and sexual aspects of the subject

Finally, in the fourth section I present the maid painted as a solitary figure.

Scenes with religious backgrounds

“God is to be found amid pots.”

St. Teresa of Avila

(Read more: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/1301/the-god-of-small-things#ixzz4zYJ6yMUL
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Most common scenes from the New Testament is Jesus’ visit to the house of Martha and Mary, and the Supper at Emmaus.

Martha and Mary were the sisters of Lazarus, who was resurrected by Jesus. One day Jesus visits the house of the two sisters. Martha gets on with the preparation of a meal for the visitor, while Mary listens to Jesus talking and does nothing.  At some point Martha complains to Jesus that she has no help, and asks him to tell Mary to give her a hand. Jesus vindicates Mary in his response.

Martha is seen as the representative of “vita activa”, whereas Mary represents “vita contemplativa”.

Jesus’ visit highlights the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics believe that salvation is the result of good works, whereas Protestants view it as a matter of faith.

In any case, Martha is the “kitchen maid”, and the kitchen maid is “Martha”.

Joachim Bueckelaer 1569

Kitchen scene, with Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary in the background

Joachim Bueckelaer – Kitchen Piece, with Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary in the background

oil on canvas, 110 × 140.5 cm (43.3 × 55.3 in)

Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, Holland

Jacob Matham, 1603

Kitchen_Scene_with_Kitchen_Maid_Preparing_Fish

Jacob Matham (Netherlandish, Haarlem 1571–1631 Haarlem)

Kitchen Scene with Kitchen Maid Preparing Fish, Christ at Emmaus in the Background, from Kitchen and Market Scenes with Biblical Scenes in the Background, 1603.

Engraving, sheet: 9 1/2 x 12 5/8 in. (24.2 x 32 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Velazquez, 1618

Diego Velazquez, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

Diego Velazquez,

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

oil on canvas, 60 × 103.5 cm (23.6 × 40.7 in)

National Gallery of Art, London, England

The young maid in the foreground is obviously upset, almost crying, while she toils to prepare aioli to serve with the fish. The older woman next to her seems to be pointing to the picture in the background, where Jesus is preaching to both sisters.

Velazquez, 1617/18

Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus by Diego Velázquez

Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus by Diego Velázquez

Oil on canvas, 55 x 118 cm

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

“This painting is widely considered to be Velázquez’s earliest known work. The artist painted Christ appearing to his disciples at Emmaus in the left background. In the foreground he depicted a Moorish servant working in the kitchen. The inversion of the religious and the worldly subjects was inspired by Flemish painters, including Pieter Aertsen.”

There is an additional element in this picture compared to the previous one. The maid may be a slave. Some analysts claim that by including a Moorish maid whi apprently is a slave in this picture, Velazquez wanted to make a statement against slavery.

Velazquez, 1618/20

Diego Velazquez-La Cucinera, Art Institute of Chicago

Diego Velazquez

La Cucinera, La mulata, The Kitchen Maid

Oil on canvas, 21 7/8 x 41 1/8 in. (55.9 x 104.2 cm)

Art Institute of Chicago

Unlike its sister painting in Dublin, this one does not have the Emmaus Supper scene in the background. Velazquez erased the biblical scene in a move to “disengage” the topic from the biblical story and emphasize its contemporariness.

The kitchen scene

“Young men from the farm flirting with maids in kitchens or in the marketplace is a theme that descends from Pieter Aertsen (1507/8-1575) and his Antwerp pupil Joachim Beuckelaer to a fair number of Dutch and Flemish painters. The earlier works in this tradition convey religious and ethical ideas while entertaining the viewer with scenes of human comedy and abundant displays of naturalistic representation. Dutch authors such as Erasmus (1466?–1536) and Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert (1522–1590) compared food and sex as sensual pleasures and also condemned professions such as cookery, butchery, and fishmongering as serving the baser appetites.” (Kitchen Scene)

Peter Wtewael, 1620s

Working Title/Artist: Kitchen Scene Working Date: 1620s
photography by mma, Digital File DP146469.tif
retouched by film and media (jnc) 10_11_12

Peter Wtewael, Kitchen Scene, oil on canvas, 44 3/4 x 63 in. (113.7 x 160 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA

Peter was the son of Joachim Wtewael. The painting was originally attributed to Jan Steen, and then to Joachim Wtewael.

‘In The Met’s picture, the kitchen maid’s skewering of a chicken, the young man’s offer of a bird (a duck, in this case), and his handling of an open jug with an extended middle finger are clear allusions to sexual intercourse. “Hunting the hare” was a euphemism for lovemaking, but here the dead hares probably stand for fertility, as does the basket of eggs (which were also considered an aphrodisiac). The various meats (vlees, or flesh) refer to carnal desire, and draw a parallel between gluttony and lust. The hanging cock and almost any form that appears phallic (especially the pestle in a mortar) amplify the humor, and also demonstrate the artist’s powers of invention and description.’ (Kitchen Scene)

The beautiful maid

The kitchen maid has been presented in a multitude of sexual contexts. Given the conditions of her employment, a kitchen maid did not have a solid ground on which to protect herself from unwanted gestures of the male members of the family and the guests. In a miraculous way, the sweaty, smelly young woman was transfromed into a sex object as if she had come out of her luxurious toilet. Totally hypocritical, totally unacceptable, but these were the times.

Sir Nathaniel Bacon,c. 1620 – 1625

Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit c.1620-5 Sir Nathaniel Bacon 1585-1627 Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund 1995 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T06995

Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit c.1620-5 Sir Nathaniel Bacon 1585-1627

1510 x 2475 mm

Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund 1995 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T0699

Tate Gallery, London, England

“Bacon, according to a letter dated 19 June [1626], was growing melons at his estate in East Anglia, and he was known to have a keen interest in horticulture. The subject would most likely have had erotic connotations. The abundance of ripe melons surrounding the cookmaid echo her voluptuous cleavage.”

Boucher, 1735

boucher_la_belle_cuisiniere

François Boucher (1703-1770)

La Belle cuisinière (The Beautiful Kitchen Maid)

Before 1735
Oil on wood / H. 55,5 cm L. 43,2 cm

Musee Cognacq-Jay, Paris, France.

The solitary figure

The artiifciality of the maid as a sex object is relinquished in the paintings where the maid is painted as a solitayr figure.

Anonymous, between 1631 and 1677

Anonymous, The Kitchen Maid, 31cm by 24 cm

Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, Holland

This maid is a real person, there is no cleavage, no flirting with anyone, she just carries on with her job.

Vermeer, c. 1660

Johannes Vermeer, The Milk Maid (or The Kitchen Maid) oil on canvas, h 45.5 cm × w 41 cm

Johannes Vermeer, The Milk Maid (or The Kitchen Maid) oil on canvas, h 45.5 cm × w 41 cm

Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, Holland

“…his “milkmaid” exudes a very earthy appeal, with her pushed-up sleeves (revealing pale skin normally covered), her ample form (similar to that of women in slightly earlier works by Rubens), and her faint smile. The box on the floor is a foot warmer with a pot of coals inside; foot warmers frequently suggest feminine desire in Dutch genre paintings  (because they would heat not only feet but everything under a woman’s long skirt). “

(Source:  Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) and The Milkmaid, Walter Liedtke Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Chardin, 1738

Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699 – 1779 ), The Kitchen Maid, 1738, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection 1952.5.38, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699 – 1779 ), The Kitchen Maid, 1738,

oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection 1952.5.38,

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA

Chardin in this picture is the king of understatement. The picture is stripped to the bare minimum of elements needed to illustrate the subject. Not even a line is superfluous. The maid is staring at empty space. Time has stopped.

Chardin, 1738

Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699 – 1779 ), The Scullery Maid, c. 1738, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection; Frame: Gift of the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art) 2014.79.708

Chardin, The Scullery Maid, oil on canvas, 47 × 38.1 cm (18 1/2 × 15 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA

The shiny pots tell us how well the mid is doing her job. She is looking away from the barrel, at something we cannot see. She is in the picture with her body, but outside the picture with her mind.

Chardin, 1739

CHARDIN, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon, Servant Returning from Market, 1739

CHARDIN, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon, Servant Returning from Market, 1739

Louvre, Paris, France

There is nothing like the abundance of the Dutch kitchen scenes in Chardin. Only the bread is clearly visible.

The maid has an enigmatic smile and looks away. As noticed in previous pictures, she is at the smae time inside the picture and out of it.

after Gerrit Dou, 1754

The Flemish kitchenmaid; a young girl seated in a kitchen and peeling carrots, surrounded by tubs and kitchen utensils, carrots and fish in foreground; after Gerrit Dou Etching and engraving

The Flemish kitchenmaid; a young girl seated in a kitchen and peeling carrots, surrounded by tubs and kitchen utensils, carrots and fish in foreground; after Gerrit Dou

Etching and engraving

British Museum, London

Henry Walton, 1776

Plucking the Turkey exhibited 1776 Henry Walton 1746-1813 Purchased 1912 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N02870

Plucking the Turkey

Plucking the Turkey exhibited 1776 Henry Walton 1746-1813 Purchased 1912 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N02870

Tate Gallery, London, England

“This painting was exhibited in London in 1776, during the early stages of the war with revolutionary America. Walton’s image of a cookmaid plucking a turkey is an example of the kind of lowly subject-matter denigrated by Sir Joshua Reynolds and the new Royal Academy.
 
But it may also make a coded political reference. The turkey was very closely associated with America: Benjamin Franklin even proposed that it should become the symbol of independent America, instead of the eagle. The painting may, therefore, be a pro-British comment on the anticipated fate of the rebellious colonists.”

 

Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin: Food and Kitchen Paintings

Today I want to share with you my enthusiasm about Chardin’s paintings.

Marcel Proust wrote about Chardin:

“We have learned from Chardin that a pear is as living as a woman, that an ordinary piece of pottery is as beautiful as a precious stone. The painter had proclaimed the divine equality of all the things before the mind that contemplates them, before the light that beautifies them.”

Proust also wrote of the artist, “Everyday life will charm you once you have absorbed Chardin’s painting for a few days like a lesson. Then, having understood the life of his painting, you will have discovered the beauty of life.”

Self Portrait
Self Portrait

A Short Biography

November 2, 1699 – December 6, 1779

A renowned French artist of the 18th Century, Chardin was well known for his still-life works and genre paintings. His refined and realistic style had a lasting influence on some of the greatest artists of the 19th and 20th Centuries, including Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954) and Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906). His depictions were of simple subjects, but masterful in their execution, ….

His training was under French history painters, Pierre Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicolas Coypel (1690 – 1734), though he trained mostly from his own studies. According to the Getty Museum Biography on Chardin the painter got his start executing signposts for tradesmen and detailing the works of other artists. He was documented in 1724 as a member of the Academy of Saint Luc in Paris, but was discovered by Nicolas de Largillière (1656 – 1746), a portrait painter. Largillière recommended Chardin’s entry into the Royal Academy of Painting (Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture) in 1728.

The works that garnered his acceptance into the Academy were, La Raie (The Ray) and, The Buffet, displaying his realistic representations and established his nickname as the “painter of animals and fruit.” From here Chardin developed his skill of still-life further and grew a love of painting genre works. The painter’s reputation escalated him into gainful patronage, including a pension from King Louis XV (1710 – 1774). His works continually evolved from simple still-life painting into highly detailed representations of everyday life in French society.

After 1770, Chardin began to lose his eyesight, but still progressed as an artist with his adoption of pastel painting. The artist once said of painting, “We use colors, but we paint with our feelings,” and for him still-life subjects had a life of their own. …

Source: Uffizzi Gallery

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York USA

In celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the 18th-century French artist Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a major loan exhibition of sixty-six works that survey the artist’s distinguished career as a still life and genre painter. On view from June 27, 2000 through September 3, 2000, “Chardin” was the first exhibition in New York devoted to the artist and the first in the United States in more than twenty years.

In contrast to the rococo extravagance of the paintings of his contemporaries, Chardin achieved extraordinary success as a painter of still lifes and interior scenes—then regarded as the least important of artistic genres. His work is characterized by quiet simplicity and pictorial harmony. The critic Denis Diderot wrote in 1763 that a still life by Chardin “is nature itself; the objects free themselves from the canvas and are deceptively true to life.” Chardin has continued to be greatly admired, inspiring many 19th-century artists, including Manet and Cézanne.

Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented on the exhibition: “During his lifetime, Chardin was recognized as one of the great painters of his day and, rightfully, appreciation for his work has never waned. The Metropolitan is delighted to present the paintings of this exceptional artist to our visitors, who may not be aware of the magnitude of his accomplishments. Through Chardin’s eyes, seemingly banal objects and scenes—a copper pot, a washerwoman, a mother admonishing a child, a basket of wild strawberries—are infused with an uncommon degree of emotional intensity in compositions of exquisite balance and beauty. Rejecting the styles and subjects of his contemporaries, such as Boucher and Fragonard, Chardin elevated the still life to a noble art form and achieved a place for himself as a quiet revolutionary in the pantheon of art history.”

The Skate
The Skate

Jean-Baptiste Siméon CHARDIN
The Skate c. 1725-1726

© Musée du Louvre/A. Dequier – M. Bard

This early masterpiece by Chardin was immediately judged worthy of the finest Flemish examples (Snyders, Flyt). In The Skate, “this strange monster”, Proust admired “the beauty of its vast and delicate structure, tinted with red blood, blue nerves and white muscles, like the nave of a polychromatic cathedral”.

Placed in contrast to the cauldron and pitcher — inert accessories at the right — to the left appears the tense and strange figure of a kitten, fur raised, seemingly frightened by a scene taking place outside of the painting. The skinned skate, evocative of Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox, with the odd assortment of objects arranged around it, was a source of astonishment to all painters — even as far as Matisse — for the riveting power of the animal’s vacant and ghostly gaze. The realism of the different elements of this false still life has forever served as a model to artists.

Musee du Louvre 

Still Life with Cat and Fish
Still Life with Cat and Fish

CHARDIN, Jean Baptiste Simeon

Still-Life With Cat and Fish. (Le Larron en Bonne Fortune), 1728
Oil on canvas
79,5 x 63 cm

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Still Life with Cat and Rayfish
Still Life with Cat and Rayfish

CHARDIN, Jean Baptiste Simeon
Still-Life With Cat and Rayfish, c. 1728
Oil on canvas
79,5 x 63 cm

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Chardin is represented in the museum by three exceptional still lifes: the present pair, dated 1728, and a still life with a jug and copper cauldron from a few years later. Chardin’s work falls within a naturalising trend which co-existed with the Rococo in eighteenth-century France. The key element in his canvases is the object, which varies and changes its role within the painting according to its relationship with the other elements painted in it. It has been said that Chardin is the painter of the bourgeoisie, who appear in his paintings of the 1730s surrounded by everyday objects which form part of their surroundings. Chardin’s still lifes depict the painter’s favourite objects which were part of his own intimate daily life and which he frequently reused in his paintings. Very few preparatory drawings by Chardin are known, which is consistent with what we know of his distinctive working method. Mariette, in his book Abecedario pittorico of 1749 (published 1853), commented that the artist always had to have the model in front of him from the first sketch to the last brushstroke. From Mariette we also know that Chardin sold his paintings for higher prices than those realised by other artists working in more prestigious genres such as figure painting.

This pair of canvases, formerly in the collection of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, was purchased in 1986. Both canvases show the influence of Dutch painting which is evident in Chardin’s earliest works, in which he adapted northern subjects and formats to his own taste. The Still Life with Cat and Fish is signed and dated 1728. The date, which is difficult to read, was recorded in the literature prior to 1979 as 1758. This was rectified by Rosenberg and Carrit at the time of the 1979 Chardin exhibition when the dating was revised to 1728, which is more in line with the style of this pair of oils. On 25 September of that year Chardin was admitted to the Académie as a painter of fruits and animals.

It is during this period -from which date two of his masterpieces,The Rayfish of around 1725, and The Buffet of 1728- that one can most easily detect the influence of Dutch still life painting. At this point Chardin also started to include the presence of animals into his world of silent inanimate objects, disturbing the tranquility of the composition by their movements. The present two canvases, which are based on simple compositional arrangements (a stone kitchen surface on which are arranged the animals, the mortar, the oysters, salmon, vegetables and crockery), form a contrasting horizontal with the fish hanging from the hooks. The rich colouring, applied with generous quantities of pigment and with delicate brushstrokes all over the picture surface, create a realistic image filled with visual integrity. The range of whites which Chardin uses here for the fish scales and the fur of the animals would be admired by artists of the next generation such as Descamps. There are two variants of these canvases in the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Burrell Collection, Glasgow.

Mar Borobia

The Buffet
The Buffet

The Buffet
1728
Oil on canvas, 194 x 129 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Still life with jar of olives
Still life with jar of olives

Still-Life with a Bottle of Olives
1760
Oil on canvas, 71 x 98 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

At the salon of 1763, the philosopher Denis Diderot rhapsodised over Chardin’s picture of “an old Chinese porcelain vessel, two biscuits, a jar full of olives, a bowl of fruit, two glasses half-filled with wine, a Seville orange and a pie”. It was the honesty that Diderot loved: “For this porcelain bowl is made of real porcelain; these olives really do look as if they are floating in water; these biscuits are just waiting to be picked up and eaten; this Seville orange to be split open and squeezed; this glass of wine to be drunk; this fruit to be peeled; this pie to be cut into.”

Bee Wilson, New Statesman, 3rd April 2000

The Kitchen Table
The Kitchen Table

The Kitchen Table (1755?)

Oil on canvas
39.7 x 47.6 cm (15 5/8 x 18 3/4 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This still life of humble kitchen wares, and another depicting elegant serving utensils, were exhibited as a pair at the Salon of 1757. Close examination reveals that Chardin changed the position of many objects as he painted, evidence of his painstaking craftsmanship and determination to create harmonious balance in what appear to be casual groupings. The reworking of the mortar and pestle at the right is most apparent to the naked eye.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Still Life with Utensils
Still Life with Utensils

Still Life with Cooking Utensils, c. 1728-30

Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin
French, 1699-1779
Oil on canvas (one of a pair)
15-3/4 x 12-3/8 in. (40.0 x 31.4 cm)

The Norton Simon Foundation

This painting is “provisions de cuisine,” displaying food and kitchen utensils for a simple meal. Though these items appear casually arranged, the utensils are the creation of a painter’s world of carefully calculated visual relationships. In “Still Life with Cooking Utensils,” the visual weight of the white cloth spilling over the ledge matches the similar disposition of the green onions. The handle of the water jug counters the emphatic circular sweep of the kettle, whose hollowness adds depth to the arrangement. Chardin’s still lifes are not experiments in trompe l’oeil, as one look at his surfaces will tell, but rather simultaneous confrontations between object and paint.

Chardin-Dead-Bird-large

Still-Life with Dead Pheasant and Hunting Bag
1760
Oil on canvas, 72 x 58 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

 

Source: Food in the Arts Refound 

 

Basket of Wild Strawberries
Basket of Wild Strawberries

Basket of Wild Strawberries, 1761
Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779)
Oil on canvas; 15 x 18 1/8 in. (38 x 46 cm)
Signed (lower left): chardin
Private collection