Tea at Trianon: John Singer Sargent and the American ‘Dollar Princesses’

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, June 1, 2025

John Singer Sargent and the American ‘Dollar Princesses’

From Artnet:

They were known as the “dollar princesses.” American heiresses who married into the British aristocracy, swapping their new wealth for titles and the chance to rub shoulders with nobility. Think the Countess in Downton Abbey or most of the cast of The Buccaneers. Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women kept many of England’s Dukes, Earls, and Lords financially afloat. And in those days, the surest way to signal your high status was to have your portrait painted by John Singer Sargent.
A new exhibition dedicated to the celebrated society painter at London’s Kenwood House puts the spotlight on this phenomenon. “Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits,” on view through October 5, not only brings our attention to some of the artist’s most magnificent masterpieces, it also lifts the veil on his subjects. Though these American heiresses have long been dismissed as fashionable socialites, they made significant contributions to society, politics, and the arts.

Nonetheless, these transatlantic unions were controversial on both sides of the pond. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Whitelaw Reid, the American ambassador to Britain, of how he “thoroughly disliked” the marriages, “which are not even matches of esteem and liking, but which are based on the sale of the girl for her money and the purchase of the man for his title.” (Read more.)