Tea at Trianon: A Van Gogh Retrospective

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

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

A Van Gogh Retrospective

From Architectural Digest:

The drawings from this period are rough compared with Van Gogh’s later works, but they offer a lens through which to view the immortal paintings he produced over the decade to come. Simple charcoal sketches of miners’ cottages drawn in 1879, for example, are linked to his later Farmhouse with Two Figures or Street in Auvers-sur-Oise (both completed in 1890, the year of his untimely death). The exhibition also sheds light on the passions and struggles of Van Gogh’s early years. “You can see then that I’m working like mad, but for the moment it isn’t giving very heartening results,” he wrote to Theo. “But I have hopes that these thorns will bear white flowers in their time, and that this apparently sterile struggle is nothing other than a labour of giving birth. First pain, then joy afterwards.” (Read more.)

julygirl said...: I love that painting....have never seen it before. It is so charming....I would like to jump right into it and walk around.; February 26, 2015 at 5:42:00 PM EST