Kimbell Art Museum acquires 1760 masterpiece despite losing Christie’s auction
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth announced Wednesday the acquisition of Jean Siméon Chardin’s “The Cut Melon,” a work completed in 1760 that is one of the French artist’s finest still lifes.
The painting is an actual balancing act of a cantaloupe slice sitting delicately atop the cut melon. It’s also a feat because it’s one of the few works he painted on an oval canvas.
The balancing act is a startling visual and seems almost impossible to achieve in real life. Anywhere else, the melon would fall onto the other rounded objects surrounding it, like the ripening peaches, the two corked bottles of liqueur, two pears and a white ceramic pitcher decorated with flowers.
But that wouldn’t happen even if Chardin, who lived 1699 to 1779 in Paris, painted the objects in the middle of an earthquake. He mastered balance using color and light to weigh the objects and make them glow. The surfaces of the dark glass bottles shine, the pears look like they are encased in gold, and the seductive peaches seem as if the first bite would be the best taste ever.
“It is no secret that we have long hoped for a great Chardin still life for the Kimbell, where the artist’s visual poetry would be so at home in the museum’s galleries,” said Eric Lee, the Kimbell’s director. “We are ecstatic to have now acquired a Chardin still life of such beauty and quality.
“The Cut Melon is one of the great masterpieces of 18th-century French painting and will be cherished by the Kimbell and loved by its visitors for generations to come.”
Were it not for a dispute, the museum may not have gotten it.
Historically held in private collections, beginning with Jacques Roëttiers de La Tour who in 1761 acquired it and “The Jar of Apricots” (now in the collection of The Art Gallery of Ontario), followed by François Martial Marcille, a famous collector. Charlotte de Rothschild, the wife of baron Nathaniel de Rothschild, bought in 1876.
In June 2024, Italian investor Nanni Bassani Antivari bought “The Cut Melon” for $26 million from Christie’s in Paris. It was a world record for a painting by Chardin, who was flying high as an artist when he finished the work.
The Kimbell was the underbidder.
But the museum was in luck after the investor did not pay. Christie’s sued and it returned to the family.
The Kimbell purchased directly from the descendants of the Rothschild family this year.
It is the second painting by the acclaimed French artist in the collection. It joins “Young Student Drawing,” circa 1738, giving the museum examples from his strengths: still life and genre painting.
It will be on view in the Kahn building on May 22.
The Kimbell’s permanent collection consists of about 375 works, including European paintings and sculpture from the Italian Renaissance, and Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch and Flemish works of the 17th century.
This story was originally published May 21, 2025 at 12:05 PM.
