Tea at Trianon: The Winslow House

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

Thursday, September 19, 2024

The Winslow House

From ArtNet:

The house that launched Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural career is on the market for $1.98 million. In 1893, shortly after leaving the firm Adler & Sullivan, Wright was commissioned to build the Winslow House, in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. Although Wright had surreptitiously completed several projects around the city while employed at Adler & Sullivan—so-called bootleg houses including Parker House and Thomas Gale House in Oak Park—Winslow House was his first as an independent architect.

Wright, then 26, considered the 5,000-square-foot, two-story home the first of his Prairie School buildings. Indeed, there are numerous elements he would reuse and expand upon throughout his career. The low-pitched roof with deep eaves recalls the vast horizon of the open plain, the door is slightly sunken, and the home is symmetrical divided horizontally between slate and golden Roman brick. (Read more.)