Tea at Trianon: ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, August 13, 2020

‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’

From ArtNet:

Outdoor dining is the necessary rage in 2020, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s sumptuous The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) is one of the most idyllic images of its charms. Now in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the painting’s ode to al fresco fun is both well-known and well-loved—but there are plenty of layers to the image too. Measuring an impressive 51 by 68 inches, The Luncheon of the Boating Party is among the largest canvases Renoir ever made—and one of the most complex. It took sixteen arduous months to complete this image of casual leisure. As he said of the painting, “every once in a while you must attempt things that seem too difficult.”

It depicts a real place: Maison Fournaise of Chatou, a beloved floating restaurant moored along the Seine River, where hungry canoeists could paddle up to the restaurant. Renoir worked on the giant canvas in different locations: en plein air at Maison Fournaise (painting outdoors was common for the Impressionists, but rarely at this scale), and in his studio to capture the likenesses of the fourteen separate sitters, who were impossible to get together all at once. (Read more.)