Jean-Siméon Chardin, who was born in Paris in 1699 and died in 1779 at the age of eighty, is one of the greatest painters of still lifes.

The masterpiece 'Le panier de fraises des bois', which will be auctioned at Artcurial in Paris on Wednesday, has never been auctioned before.

The expectation of 12 to 15 million euros corresponds to its quality, but also to its provenance.

After its creation in 1761 and a first exhibition in the Paris "Salon", the painting disappeared for about a hundred years.

Then it reappeared in the annals of art history when it was bought by the collector François Marcille.

He was one of the rediscoverers of 18th-century painting, which had fallen into oblivion after the French Revolution.

This amazing still life with wild strawberries has remained in the family to this day, seems intact and fresh to touch, a distant blur and yet so close to our senses.

Chardin painted "Le panier de fraises des bois" at the height of his artistic career.

He is said to have spent hours setting up the templates for his still lifes, moving the objects back and forth.

Here he placed the eponymous basket of berries in the exact center of the pictorial space, carefully layering the fruit into a tall, surprisingly supportive cone.

Especially in his late work, his paintings radiate an almost spiritual calm and already point to modernity.

They no longer have anything mannerist or picturesque about them, for the painter was primarily interested in the forms, the light and the textures.

The magic of Chardin's painting is created by numerous layers of paint, which create these textures, but also gentle transitions.

It is not surprising that Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh expressly counted him among their role models.

However, the most direct influence can be felt in the still lifes of Paul Cézanne and Giorgio Morandi.

"Le panier de fraises des bois" was ennobled as the artist's most beautiful still life with the major Chardin retrospective of 1979 at the Grand Palais by being chosen as the cover image for the catalog written by Pierre Rosenberg - then director of the Louvre and renowned French art historian .

Works by Chardin rarely come onto the auction market.

However, only last year his “Femme à la Fontaine” was sold at Christie's in Paris for 6 million euros.

Previously, a record was set at Christie's in New York in 2013 for "La Brodeuse," which grossed €3 million.