Tea at Trianon: Cézanne Portraits

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

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Cézanne Portraits

From The Spectator:

The National Portrait Gallery’s new blockbuster brings together more than 50 of Paul Cézanne’s portraits from collections across the world, including paintings that are being displayed in Britain for the very first time. The show, which opens on October 26 and is being staged in conjunction with the Musée d’Orsay and Washington DC’a National Gallery of Art, aims to shed light on the approach, ideas and development of this extraordinarily influential 19th century French artist by focusing on portraits created across the entire span of his 45-year career.

The exhibition includes portraits of Cézanne’s Uncle Dominique, dating from the 1860s, all the way through to his paintings of Vallier, a man who helped Cézanne in his garden and studio in Aix-en-Provence shortly before the artist’s death in 1906. ‘Up until now, Cézanne’s portraiture has received surprisingly little attention, so we are thrilled to be able to bring together so many of his portraits for the first time to reveal arguably the most personal, and therefore most human, aspect of Cézanne’s art,’ says Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery. (Read more.)