Tea at Trianon: Lost Sculpture Found

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, January 5, 2025

Lost Sculpture Found

From The Times:

A long-lost bronze cast of a sculpture by Camille Claudel, Auguste Rodin’s spurned mistress, is to go up for auction after it was found in an empty flat in Paris. It has been valued at between €1.5 million and €2 million.
The Mature Age, which is considered to be one of Claudel’s masterpieces, depicts her despair at the realisation that Rodin, the hallowed French sculptor who was her mentor and lover, was not going to leave Rose Beuret, his long-time partner, for her.
The bronze version, which was cast in 1907, had been lost since it went on display the next year. It was found in September by Matthieu Semont, the French auctioneer, after he was asked to provide a probate value of the contents of a flat near the Eiffel Tower that had been uninhabited for years.
Lifting up a sheet, he found the work underneath. “I was overcome with emotion,” he said. “I cried.”
The Mature Age was originally a plaster cast produced by Claudel at the end of the 19th century at a time when she was facing up to the reality that Rodin would never marry her. It shows three naked figures, with Rodin in the middle leaving a youthful and imploring Claudel for an elderly Beuret who is leading him towards death, according to specialists. (Read more.)