Tea at Trianon: A Glittering Masterpiece With a Dark History

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

Sunday, October 13, 2024

A Glittering Masterpiece With a Dark History

The Peacock Room. (I have posted on it before.) From ArtNet:

American painter James McNeill Whistler and English architect Thomas Jeckyll created the room, which Whistler titled Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room. With Prussian blue walls, copper-green overglazing, and Dutch metal designed to look like gold leaf, the room is symphonic in its overall effect. Created from 1876 to 1877, the room was designed as the dining room of British shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland for his Kensington townhouse. Architect Richard Norman Shaw was hired to lead the renovation and Shaw brought on fellow architect Thomas Jeckyll to design the dining room. Jeckyll conceptualized the room as a Porzellanzimmer (porcelain room) to display Leyland’s collection of blue and white porcelain, dating primarily from the Qing dynasty. (Read more.)