Tea at Trianon: From The Royal Collection

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

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

From The Royal Collection

From The Art Newspaper:

Major renovations at Buckingham Palace in London will allow works from the private collection of the British Royal Family—many of which have never before been displayed in an exhibition setting—to go on show later this year.
The exhibition at the Queen's Gallery, set to open in December and run until January 2022, will feature 65 works from the Royal Collection, including drawings by Titian and Vermeer's The Music Lesson (1662-65). A number of the show's works have, since their acquisition, only been displayed to official palace guests and tour groups during annual summer openings.
The works are among 10,000 items from the Royal Collection that are being temporarily relocated as the 18th century building undergoes an extensive refurbishment, which will reportedly cost £369m.
Among the upcoming exhibition's highlights is Rembrandt's painting The Shipbuilder and his Wife (1633), rumoured to be a favourite of Queen Elizabeth II. (Read more.)