Tea at Trianon: Sèvres Cup and Saucer of Madame de Tourzel, 1826

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, February 23, 2024

Sèvres Cup and Saucer of Madame de Tourzel, 1826

Portrait of the Duchess of Angoulême when Dauphine of France between 1834-1830

Coat of Arms of Madame la Dauphine

Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel was the last royal governess before the Revolution. From Le Boudoir:

Rare AB-shaped cup and saucer in hard porcelain, with a beautiful blue background, decorated in gold and platinum with foliage friezes including a frieze of oak leaves on the upper border, the center of the saucer decorated with a fleur-de-lis rosette, the cup with polychrome decoration in the center in a medallion of a bust portrait of Marie-Thérèse of France, Duchess of Angoulême (1778-1851), daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, after an original by François Villiers -Huet (1772-1813) circa 1810, framed with burnished gold palmettes at the corners, flanked on each side by her coat of arms as Dauphine of France in a beribboned lily wreath, the handle and interior entirely gilded (good state). Preserved in their original box in the form sheathed in gilded green morocco with roulette friezes (wear), interior in cream silk...This cup and its saucer were purchased for 350 francs and delivered on December 17, 1826 to Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel, born Louise Élisabeth de Croÿ d'Havré (1749-1832), last governess of the children of France and therefore of the Duchess of Angoulême (Archives of Sèvres, Vz4, 239 v°). (Read more.)