Tea at Trianon: La Reine en Gaulle

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, April 6, 2016

La Reine en Gaulle

From Catherine Curzon:

Now, with this apparently simple portrait, the queen put ammunition into the hands of those who disliked her. There is no hint of structure, pomp or, crucially, monarchy evident on the canvas and when the public laid eyes on the portrait during its exhibition at the Salon de Paris, they were horrified. Rather than a woman in an informal garment and in informal setting, they found themselves looking at what appeared to be a portrait of a queen in her underwear. The work was quickly withdrawn and replaced with the quickly produced, far more formal portrait seen below. Although Marie Antoinette retains her rose, she is once more seen in her familiar structured court dress. (Read more.)