Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette's Japanese Lacquer

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

Friday, June 8, 2018

Marie-Antoinette's Japanese Lacquer

From Blouin Art Info:

The J. Paul Getty Museum is displaying a collection of Japanese lacquer boxes, once the precious possessions of Marie-Antoinette. “A Queen’s Treasure from Versailles: Marie-Antoinette’s Japanese Lacquer” shows some of the boxes open for the first time in a presentation of Japanese craftsmanship. Marie-Antoinette inherited 50 small Japanese boxes from her mother Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in 1780, the museum says. The French queen had the cabinet door to her private sitting room in Versailles redecorated especially to display these precious pieces of lacquer and in the following eight years, she added another 30 pieces to the collection.

The Revolution in 1789 deposed the royal family, and after Marie-Antoinette was beheaded in 1793, the French government transferred the collection to the museum that would eventually become the Louvre. These objects, now on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, are being loaned from the Louvre as part of an exchange between the museums. Many of the boxes are shaped to resemble other objects or animals, including fans, musical instruments, a melon, and a hen. The delicate nature of the boxes’ lacquer means the exhibition will run in two rotations, so as not to damage them. (Read more.)