Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette and Japanese Art

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, May 10, 2019

Marie-Antoinette and Japanese Art

Marie-Antoinette was fascinated with the Far East and the arts of both China and Japan. From The Iris:

The lacquer box in the form of a small dog is one of the most popular objects in the exhibition A Queen’s Treasure from Versailles: Marie-Antoinette’s Japanese Lacquer at the Getty Center until January 6, 2019. Such zoomorphic items in Japanese lacquer were highly coveted by collectors during the eighteenth century, and Marie-Antoinette’s example was evidently one of her favorite pieces. In her private sitting room at Versailles, the royal palace just southwest of Paris, she placed it in a prominent spot on a table veneered with petrified wood and ornamented with gilt-bronze mounts next to the fireplace. There, visitors would not be able to escape noticing it. The queen’s guests would have wondered, as we do, how such an extraordinary object came to Versailles. The box has had quite an exciting existence, as is evident by tracing its history from the time it was made in Japan. (Read more.)