Tea at Trianon: Cecil Beaton’s Royal Portraiture

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

Friday, November 10, 2023

Cecil Beaton’s Royal Portraiture

From Tatler:

No royal photographer has captured the glamour and glory of Britain’s monarchy with as much splendour as Cecil Beaton. From a modest upbringing in Hampstead to becoming the court photographer for the Royal Family in 1937 – a position he held over three generations of sovereigns – Beaton’s stratospheric career trajectory is a remarkable one. His staggering array of portraits that have been adored across the world for almost a century.
His inimitable eye is one that dominated during an era of high society that sparkled with pomp and pageantry. Of course, those photographs of Queen Elizabeth II in her coronation robes, Princess Margaret in Dior on her 21st birthday, and the Queen Mother sat beneath a portrait of Queen Charlotte are ingrained in the minds of style savants, but his creative prowess also lent to a myriad of stage and film boundary-breaking moments. Just like when he designed the bow-adorned lace gown and feather-trimmed hat worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady – a feat he won an Academy Award for. (Read more.)