Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette in America

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

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Marie-Antoinette in America

From the Getty Center in Los Angeles:

This richly illustrated lecture by art historian Ronald Freyberger features 54 sumptuous works that originally adorned Marie-Antoinette's royal residences before the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Japanese lacquer, exotic wood veneers, jewel-like gilt bronze, superbly carved and gilded wood, as well as porcelain from the royal porcelain factory at Sèvres, were used in crafting these magnificent and historically significant examples of furniture, decorations, and useful objects by Jean-Henri Risener, Georges Jacob, and other renowned names in the history of the decorative arts.

Exacting standards of aesthetic and technical virtuosity, which had never before been attained, inform these refined works of art, for which the original commissions can be traced to Louis XVI's extravagant, tragic, and ill-fated queen.

Post-1789 owners of furniture made for Marie Antoinette, including George Watson Taylor in England, the 10th Duke of Hamilton in Scotland, and Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt on New York's Fifth Avenue, are also discussed in the lecture.

Ronald Freyberger has published and lectured widely on 18th-century French decorative arts. His research helped establish Madame de Pompadour's original ownership of the so-called Dudley vases, now part of the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection. (Read entire post.)

The Getty Center
Date: Sunday, July 14, 2013
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Location: Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Admission: Free; reservations recommended. Call (310) 440-7300. Share