# The Copper Drinking Fountain [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CHARDIN, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Oil on wood, 28,5 x 23 cm ## Commentary The Copper Drinking Fountain c. 1734 Oil on wood, 28,5 x 23 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris Chardin's Copper Drinking Fountain is of radical freshness and offers a strikingly different view of unimportant everyday objects previously and for the most part still overlooked. In its compositionally significant position on the central axis of the picture, the copper urn is the main attraction of the quiet scene and its central motif. What may at first sight seem to be a random detail extracted from a larger context is in fact a composition as calculated as it is convincing. The modern connoisseur of this painting will not be looking through indifferent eyes at a piece of hydraulic equipment. The ravishing painterly execution relegates the subject of the picture firmly into the background: what remains in the memory are atmospheric values. ## Related artworks - [A Child with a Teetotum]() - [A "Lean Diet" with Cooking Utensils]() - [A Vase of Flowers]() - [Attributes of Music]() - [Basket of Peaches, with Walnuts, Knife and Glass of Wine]() - [Draughtsman]() - [Fruit, Jug, and a Glass]() - [Game Still-Life with Hunting Dog]() - [Girl with Racket and Shuttlecock]() - [Grapes and Pomegranates]() - ['La Brioche' \(Cake\)]() - [La Gouvernante \(The Governess\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()