Tea at Trianon: Portrait of Marian Anderson

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

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Portrait of Marian Anderson

From Smithsonian:

Seventy-six years ago, the Daughters of the American Revolution barred Marian Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Outraged, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and invited Anderson to perform on Easter Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial. Singing “My Country Tis of Thee” before of a crowd of more than 75,000, Anderson's performance marked a turning point in the historic battle for Civil Rights.

Today Anderson’s legacy, continues through the Black Heritage postage stamps, the longest running commemorative series in U.S. history and featuring more than three dozen well-known African Americans dating from Harriet Tubman in 1978 to the recent 2015 stamp, depicting Robert Robertson Taylor, the country's first academically trained African American architect.

Known to be one of the most beautiful stamps in the series, the portrait of Marian Anderson was painted by Canadian artist Albert Slark, who has also created stamp portraits of Spencer Tracy, Betty Davis and Paul Robeson. His award-winning portrait of Anderson was exhibited at the Society of Illustrators 48th Annual Exhibition in New York City. (Read more.)