Tea at Trianon: An Iconic Dining Room

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, February 5, 2018

An Iconic Dining Room

From Architectural Digest:

The selections were autobiographical, an elegant blend of cultures and styles that reflected the couple’s origins, interests, and postings. Here were English Regency and Empire chairs (Vangie wrote a lusty book about Napoléon and Joséphine), a Louis XVI console dessert, and a copy of a Han dynasty horse (David was America’s envoy to China in the 1970s). Above a mantel by 18th-century architect James Paine hung a period portrait of Marie Antoinette, flanked by a 1797 Jean-François Duchateau painting of Selim III of the Ottoman Empire. A portrait of Pocahontas was painted in trompe l’oeil on the other side of the French queen, balancing the sultanic visage while allowing the jib door to the kitchen to swing freely. (Read more.)