Pierre Rosenberg is director of the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Widely acknowledged in his time as a premier painter of still-life and genre scenes, Jean-Baptiste-Simion Chardin (1699-1779) created unsentimentalised works that appeal to viewers today for their richness of feeling and simplicity of composition. This sumptuously illustrated book reproduces in full colour 99 of Chardin's works and arranges them around five themes: Chardin's Beginnings and His First Still-lifes, Utensils and Household Objects, Genre Scenes, Chardin's Return to Still-life, and Pastels. The contributors to the volume explore Chardin's work from many different angles, including the latest thinking on such lesser-known facets of his life and work as his use of ceramics and glass, his financial and property affairs, and the complex history of engravings of his paintings. Each of the five sections of the book has an introduction and a selection of Chardin's paintings accompanied on facing pages by complete provenance, exhibition, and bibliographic information. The book also offers an extensive Chardin biography, an index of names and places, and an index of works. This book is the catalogue of an international exhibition of Chardin's work, timed to coincide with the tercentenary of his birth. The exhibition opens at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris from 7 September to 22 November 1999, and then travels to the Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle in D|sseldorf from 5 December 1999 to 20 February 2000, the Royal Academy in London from 9 March to 28 May 2000 and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 19 June to 17 September 2000.