Tea at Trianon: Revolutionary War Exhibition Opens at Anderson House

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

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Revolutionary War Exhibition Opens at Anderson House

From The InTowner:

King Louis XVI of France sent thousands of French soldiers and sailors across the Atlantic to support the American War of Independence. It was an adventure none of them would forget. This special exhibition, “Revolutionary Reflections: French Memories of the War for America,” which will remain on view through next October at the Society of the Cincinnati’s historic mansion headquarters and American Revolution Institute, explores how the king’s officers understood the American Revolution and their role in the achievement of American independence, and how they remembered the war in the years that followed — years of revolutionary upheaval in France that included the execution of the king and many of their brothers-in-arms.

Drawn from the Institute’s collections, along with loans from private collections, the exhibition pairs the written recollections of French officers with life portraits of the writers, including masterpieces by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze and the great Spanish portrait painter Vicente López y Portaña. Among the treasures on view will be the original manuscript memoir of General Rochambeau, who commanded the largest French army sent to America, along with his family’s annotated copy of the published work.

Another highlight of the exhibition is the long-lost portrait of the marquis de Saint-Simon, who commanded 4,000 French troops at Yorktown, together with Saint-Simon’s manuscript journal of the Yorktown campaign. The portrait was long owned by the marquis’ descendants, but was hidden during the Spanish Civil War and then long forgotten. The Institute acquired it and brought it to Washington in 2018. The portrait has never been displayed in a formal exhibition in the United States. The journal — yet to be published in English — has never been displayed anywhere. (Read more.)