Tea at Trianon: Monet and Boston: Lasting Impression

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

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Monet and Boston: Lasting Impression

From the Boston Globe:

Beginning in April, the museum will display its entire collection of Claude Monet oil paintings — all 35 of them, which is “among the largest holdings of the artist’s work outside France,” according to the museum’s announcement. Six Monet paintings on loan from private collections will round out the exhibition, bringing the grand total of works to 41. Titled “Monet and Boston: Lasting Impression,” the exhibition will highlight the city’s and the museum’s commitment to the artist. Between April 18 and Aug. 23, guests will be able to see works from Monet’s lifetime, ranging from early paintings completed in the 1860s to his later Impressionist Grainstacks, Rouen Cathedral, and Water Lilies series. Boston has long been a “center for the collection and appreciation of Monet’s paintings,” the museum said, and many of the artist’s works were brought to the city during his lifetime. (Read more.)