Tea at Trianon: Pure Springtime Joy

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

Monday, March 22, 2021

Pure Springtime Joy

From Architectural Digest:

David Hockney is an artist most often associated with California, as his enchanting landscapes, enviable pool, and past AD coverage all prove. But fans of the artist are no doubt well aware of his British roots. And as it happens, English landscapes, in particular those in the Yorkshire countryside, are one half of a new exhibition’s focus. The other component of this joyful new show, which first debuted in Amsterdam and has now received an update courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is none other than Vincent van Gogh.
“[What] really unites them is an absolutely ecstatic joy of nature,” Ann Dumas, MFA Houston’s consulting curator of European art, as well as the driving force behind “Hockney–Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature,” says to AD. Of course, an ebullient sense of happiness, and one ushered in by the great outdoors, is exactly what many are in need of these days. After all, this show comes not only almost a year after the coronavirus pandemic first arrived in the U.S., but also just as a harrowing winter in Texas and throughout the country is (hopefully) in its waning days. (Read more.)