Tea at Trianon: Giverny

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

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Giverny

Keeping Monet's gardens abloom.

The Giverny house, which Monet was too poor to buy at first, was the painter’s home for 43 years. He eventually had the money to build a greenhouse, add a studio and hire gardeners, though at first he forced his children into labor. In his later years, he guarded the garden jealously, allowing only rare visitors.

But after his death, the house was empty for decades and the gardens were overgrown and abandoned. Monet’s son, Michel, made the Academie des Beaux-Arts his heir in 1966. Ten years later, Gérald van der Kemp, who masterminded the restoration of Versailles, took on the job of restoring Monet’s estate. Efforts were made to find people who had been there in Monet’s time, to try to recreate the way it once looked. But by then, most were elderly and trying to recall what they had seen in their childhoods, Mr. Priest said.

Figuring out what was once in the garden was not always easy. “We know he had geraniums because we have a picture with geraniums,” he said. “But that was one year. We don’t know if they were always there. Monet was constantly changing things.”

Mr. Priest says that, to some extent, the garden is successful if it captures the essence of Impressionism — its bright colors and a feeling of gaiety. (Read entire article.)