Tea at Trianon: Lady Artists

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

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Lady Artists

Of the Old Regime.

During much of the 18th century in France, female painters defied the usual constraints on their gender and thrived among the kings, queens and nobles soon to lose their heads. This is the surprising subject of an exhibition at Washington's National Museum of Women in the Arts. "Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles and other French National Collections" focuses on 35 female artists with some 77 paintings, prints and sculptures dating from 1750 to 1850, many of which have never been on display in the U.S. The exhibition ends July 29.

"We tend to think of revolutions as being universally good and opening all boundaries all the time," says Laura Auricchio, chairwoman of humanities and associate professor of art history at the New School in New York. But in this case, it was the monarchy that gave women more of a chance to have professional careers, NMWA chief curator Jordana Pomeroy adds. (Read entire article.)