Tea at Trianon: The Miniatures of Peter Adolf Hall

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

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

The Miniatures of Peter Adolf Hall

(Via Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette.) Peter Adolph Hall painted most of the French Royal Family and French aristocracy before the Revolution. He fled the Revolution and died in Belgium in 1793. From the National Museum in Stockholm:

When Hall arrived in Paris in 1766, he was already a fully fledged miniature portraitist, with a particular talent for reproducing the finish of garment fabrics. This was to become something of a trademark. He used relatively thick layers of watercolour in relief, a technique known as impasto, to create the illusion of reflected light on various materials, especially textiles. Folds were emphasised with wide brushstrokes and lines. Another revolutionary feature of Hall’s free style was the way he depicted a glowing skin by taking advantage of the ivory on which miniatures were painted and allowing it to shine through a thin, transparent layer of watercolour paint.   
In 1767, a mere year after his arrival, Hall received a royal commission. Two years later he became an associate member of the French academy of fine arts, but he never applied for full membership as expected of him. He was so secure in his success that he clearly felt no need to devote time to producing a reception piece in order to become a full member. Besides his artistic talent and skill, there was another reason for Hall’s rapid progress in Paris: he was an adept social climber. 
 The exhibition traced how Hall’s painting style changed over the years. The colour palette became warmer, and the subjects were portrayed more freely. In the 1780s he enjoyed great success, was incredibly productive and made a lot of money. Perhaps out of a desire to please his subjects, Hall eventually developed a somewhat affected style which meant that, in particular, all the women in his portraits looked alike. The French Revolution put an abrupt end to all this. Hall’s patrons left the country, and he went too. He departed for Brussels in May 1791 and died two years later in Liège. 

 Although Hall’s style of portraiture did not survive the French Revolution, his innovative miniature paintings influenced several of his younger French contemporaries. The exhibition includes some 70 portrait miniatures from the museum’s collection, both by Hall himself and some of these followers who were heavily influenced by his mastery of free style. 

The exhibition was on show for a few months in the spring and summer of 2023, adjacent to the Treasury on the middle floor of Nationalmuseum. It formed a thematic extension to the permanent exhibition of pieces from the museum’s miniatures collection, which is the world’s largest. This collection comprises 5,700 miniatures, mainly portraits, by Swedish and European artists from the 16th to the mid 20th century. The Treasury houses 1,170 small works of significance, the majority of which are miniature portraits. (Read more.)