Tea at Trianon: Woman in Gold

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 4, 2015

Woman in Gold

From Style Court:

Set to hit theaters in April, Woman in Gold is a multi-layered story of Holocaust refugee Maria Altmann's quest to reclaim Klimt's portraits of her aunt, most famously the first work, Adele Bloch-Bauer I from 1907. The movie deals with Nazi-seized art, and more broadly the Nazis' attempts to erase an entire culture (when taken, the portrait's original title, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was eerily changed to Dame in Gold, obscuring Adele and her Jewish identity). While the plot centers on Altmann's legal battles, the film will likely generate even more interest in Adele -- as art patron and muse -- as well as in Klimt, his golden period, and early 20th-century Vienna.

But in the meantime, new opportunities to see Klimt's work and other examples of Klimt-era Viennese opulence are available across the U.S.

Gustav Klimt’s "Adam and Eve" opens at the MFA, Boston January 17. On loan from the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and completed between 1917-18, this is the first piece by Klimt to go on view at the MFA. There will be a related five-week course, A Golden Age in the World of Gustav Klimt, but each session is scheduled during a weekday afternoon. (Read more.)