Tea at Trianon: Napoleon's Marly Rouge Service

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, May 12, 2018

Napoleon's Marly Rouge Service

Of course, when Marie-Antoinette ordered dishes it was considered decadent. From Architectural Digest:

It turns out the ill-fated emperor was something of a china fetishist, annoyed and inspired by the fact that Louis XVI had had a 445-piece Sevres service crafted for himself over a decade. The Sevres factory was actually a national manufactory, explains Jody Wilkie, cochairman worldwide of the Christie’s decorative arts department, so Napoleon, like other monarchs, began to use it upon his ascent to power as “his personal gift closet.” For himself, he commissioned a 256-piece dessert set with a brilliantly colored pattern called “Marly Rouge,” edged in iron red and adorned with delicate, detailed paintings of butterflies and, somewhat strangely, insects such as moths, ants, and bees.

Sevres records are meticulous and show its delivery October 7–18, 1809, to the palace of Fontainebleau. Historians know that the service was personally important to Napoleon because he had bothered, when he had changed travel plans to head to that hunting chateau, to have the new service delivered there instead. Perhaps it had sentimental value: It was that fall and in that place that the emperor told his wife of 13 years, Josephine, that he was divorcing her to marry an Austrian princess.

The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller contains 22 of the Marly Rouge pieces, the biggest tranche to hit the market in over a century. That’s about a tenth of the original set, which included a dazzling 188 plates alone, plus items such as sugar bowls decorated with dolphins on the feet or eagle heads. (Read more.)