Tea at Trianon: The Last Portraits of Marie-Antoinette

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

Sunday, September 1, 2024

The Last Portraits of Marie-Antoinette - Kucharski

From Rodama:

Born in Warsaw in 1741, the son of a history painter and portraitist, Alexander-Albert Kucharski had followed his father into the artistic profession and been sent to Paris to study by King Stanislaw August Poniatowski, who awarded him a pension and placed him under the profection of his correspondent Madame Geoffrin. Kucharski won several prizes at the Académie royale de peinture and from 1762 frequented the ateliers of Vien and Van Loo. Contrary to the wishes of his patron who wished him to specialise in history painting, he became a portraitist, thereby freeing himself to remain in Paris and seek work in aristocratic circles. He joined the household of the prince de Condé at Chantilly and in 1776 was described as painter and drawing master to Louise Adélaïde, princesse de Bourbon-Condé. He was residing by this time in the rue de Grenelle in the fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain. Though the princesse he would have had ample opportunity to meet the comtesse de Boufflers, the princesse de Polignac and other members of Marie-Antoinette's immediate entourage. He was subsequently employed the prince de Carignan and his sister, the princesse de Lamballe. Having produced portraits of Madame Elisabeth and the comte d'Artois, in 1789 he succeeded Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun as painter to the Queen herself. According to a note on the back of a portrait Kucharski painted the Marie-Antoinette for the first time in 1780. (Read more.)