Tea at Trianon: The Enduring Appeal of Botanical Art

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, September 2, 2023

The Enduring Appeal of Botanical Art

From Architectural Digest:

Before there was photography, botanists—or anyone wishing to document flora—created detailed illustrations, known as botanical studies, intended to convey the plant’s physical appearance and other qualities. The specimen was typically rendered against a white backdrop with other relevant elements shown in detail around it—a close up of a leaf, a seed pod, or a stamen, for example. Many such pictures were created for research purposes, serving as documents of newly discovered or existing species that could be studied by naturalists. But others, realized in a similar style, were created with a more aesthetic intention. The famous Belgian botanist Pierre-Joseph Redoute, for example, was the official court artist of Marie Antoinette, and later, the plant painter of Joséphine Bonaparte, empress of France and wife to Napoleon. His depictions of flora covered the walls of their illustrious homes.

Unsurprisingly, such botanical studies have long been used to decorate. In the 1930s, the Austrian-born Swedish talent Josef Frank covered his first Flora cabinet in pages from a botanical reference book, a commission by a Swedish entomologist to house his collection of butterflies and beetles. In 1975, socialite Lee Radziwill decorated the walls of her Manhattan bedroom with framed 19th-century botanical watercolors in trompe l’oeil marble frames. “I like to imagine I’m in the country when I’m up here,” she said. (The room’s leafy Central Park views may have helped too.) Lately, the botanical studies trend—a longtime hallmark of traditional, even preppy interiors—is blooming anew. (Read more.)