Tea at Trianon: Paintings of Chantilly

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

Monday, May 4, 2015

Paintings of Chantilly

From Reading Treasure:

Filleul, like many of her royal paintings, did not survive the revolution. She was denounced to the Committee of Public Safety for wearing mourning for Louis XVI in 1794, and was arrested for attempting to sell royally commissioned furniture from the Chateau de la Muette. Anne-Rosalie had once lived at Muette and was appointed Superintendent of the chateau by Marie Antoinette after her husband's death. However, because all royally commissioned furniture was considered seized property of the new Republic, Anne-Rosalie, along with companion Marguerite-Émilie Chalgri, were charged with 'theft and concealment of property belonging to the Republic.' They were found guilty and sentenced to death.

Of the Filluel paintings that did survive to present day, few are quite as charming as her pastel paintings of the Chateau de Chantilly gardens. Her paintings capture the simple, sometimes rustic, yet overwhelmingly beautiful English-style gardens that came into vogue among the French upper elite in the 1770s and 1780s. (Read more.)