Tea at Trianon: The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings 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, June 23, 2021

The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection

From The Wall Street Journal:

In pre-Revolutionary France, collectors used books to flaunt their wealth and taste more than their erudition. Some examples can be found in “Bound for Versailles: The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection,” an exhibition opening June 25 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The show includes two books of a four-volume set of fables from 18th-century France that measure almost 2 feet high. “This is not a volume you sit down and read. This is one that you display,” said John T. McQuillen, the show’s organizer and an associate curator of printed books and bindings at the Morgan.

The show includes more than 100 books, prints and other items from ancien régime France, including letters by Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI. There are prayerbooks, such as a French translation of the book of Psalms published in 1725, as well as a 1718 edition of the ancient Greek novel “Daphnis and Chloe.” Costly and elaborate bindings, fashioned by leading craftsmen such as Nicolas-Denis Derome and Pierre-Paul Dubuisson, transformed these texts into works of art. The Morgan show features books acquired by Jayne Wrightsman, who with her husband, oil baron Charles Wrightsman, amassed a trove of 18th-century French fine and decorative arts, including paintings, sculpture, furniture and vases as well as books. (Read more.)

From Apollo:

Jayne Wrightsman, the late collector and champion of European decorative arts, bequeathed her entire collection of ancien régime manuscripts and bookbindings to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Among the 149 printed books which passed into the Morgan’s collection in 2019 are works once owned by Madame Adélaïde (daughter of King Louis XV) and Queen Marie-Antoinette, and others boasting illustrations by the likes of François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste Oudry. This display at the Morgan (25 June–26 September) considers the significance of bookbinding as an art form in the 18th-century French court, and celebrates Wrightsman’s exacting eye as a collector. Find out more from the Morgan’s website. (Read more.)