Tea at Trianon: In the Conservatory

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, January 26, 2019

In the Conservatory

From Joy of Museums:

“In the Conservatory” by Édouard Manet is set in a conservatory in Paris, it shows a fashionable couple of some social rank. Their married status is conveyed by their rings and the proximity of their hands which reflects a hint of intimacy. The woman is the focus of the portrait, as she is more prominently placed plus her more colourful attire. Their lack of engagement with the viewer creates a sense of detachment.

The conservatory in this painting was in Paris, which was then owned by painter Otto Rosen. Manet used the conservatory as a studio from 1878 to 79. The couple was Manet’s friends, the Guillemets, who owned a clothing shop. In 1945 during the end of the Second World War, this painting was among the objects evacuated from the Berlin Museums and put for safekeeping into a salt mine in Merkers. After the war, the picture was discovered and secured by the Monuments Men. Its salvage was documented in photographs, which show soldiers posing with Manet’s painting in the mine in Merkers. Thankfully it survived those challenging times, and it made its way back to the first museum to own this masterpiece. (Read more.)