Tea at Trianon: Anne Vallayer-Coster and the Royal Academy

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

Saturday, February 11, 2023

Anne Vallayer-Coster and the Royal Academy

From Artnet:

She painted Marie Antoinette but survived the Reign of Terror, she was one of just four women ever admitted to France’s Royal Academy (or Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture), and now Anne Vallayer-Coster is smashing expectations and setting records at auction.

Last month, the French painter, who lived from 1744 to 1818, was one of the highlights of the Old Masters sales at Sotheby’s New York, with three still life works selling for well above estimate. The most impressive result was Still Life of Roses in a Glass Vase, with Grapes Beside, which sold for $630,000, more than tripling the high estimate of $200,000. It was the fifth-highest result at auction for Vallayer-Coster.

The painting, of a handful of pale pink roses resting in a glass of water in front of bunch of green grapes, hadn’t been exhibited since its debut at the Paris Salon in 1804. (It was last on the block in 1990, when it fetched $341,000 at Sotheby’s New York.) (Read more.)