Tea at Trianon: Jane Avril

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

Friday, June 22, 2012

Jane Avril

The muse of Toulouse-Lautrec.

A beautiful girl, though extremely thin, with pale skin and tresses of red gold hair, Jane Avril soon became infamous for performing the cancan at the Jardin de Paris, a fashionable dance hall in the Champs-Elysees....

Lautrec saw her as a woman rather than simply another dancing girl; more than a flame that flickered bright only in the demi-monde. Yes, he painted her in glamorous poses, but he also presented the graceful and melancholic Jane in the day to day routine of her life - paintings in which she often seems to be somewhat older than her years, looking frail and tired and nervous. (Read entire article.)