Through blending the neoclassicism and romantic qualities, Houel creates a scene which is visually realistic and humid from the smoke. In his work, watercolor was employed to emphasize light and atmosphere. The painting is set up like a landscape, in line with both romanticism and the artist’s area of influence, Dutch painting. The neoclassicism construction of clean, straight lines, block colors and geometric shapes is enriched by the watercolor which was a feature of British Romanticism (1770-1850), especially in paintings by JMW Turner (1775-1851). However, there are features characteristic of the romantic movement which ran alongside neoclassicism and was in an early stage of growth in France at the time of the storming of the Bastille. This painting fits into the neoclassicism period, from 1760 to around 1850. Although they denote destruction, the whirling shapes also convey a sense of movement, reflecting the liberation of citizens. ![]() ![]() The viewer cannot escape a sense of fantastic drama – heightened by the clouds of smoke and the towering prison. 6Ī contemporary artistic observer of the fall of Bastille on July 14th, 1789, Jeanne Pierre Houel (1735-1813) entertained no similar illusions of revolutionary insignificance in his watercolor painting of the scene. She believed that once the public were over their “disillusionment,” they would restore their allegiance to the monarch. “The King listened to the news, but did not make up his mind to do anything active.” 5 As for the queen herself, although Zweig does not specify what she was doing on this night, he writes that she did not understand the historical basis for the revolution or its will. Zweig writes that on the day of the revolution’s eruption, with the storming of the Bastille (July 14th, 1789), King Louis went to sleep at ten o’clock as normal, despite having received messages alerting him to the events in Paris. When the queen encounters the convulsive forces of the French revolution, she proves powerless to master the storm. This was a key event that had precipitated her into deep unpopularity. 3 In the notorious Diamond Necklace Affair (1785), she was a victim, but people saw her as misusing valuable resources and taxpayer’s money. Regarded as the “Austrian woman” and deemed the “fundamental adversary,” 2 she failed to reach out to ordinary members of society and understand their plight, although she might have had sympathy for them. Her capture in Varennes, when she tried to flee France in June 1791, was the first time she had ever been in a bourgeois house. She did not rise to becoming a queen of the people. Zweig’s use of “average” refers to how Marie Antoinette couldn’t find a way through historically challenging circumstances to realizing this path. This personal union between the great European and often conflicting royal dynasties of the Habsburgs and Bourbons stirred hopes which form the opening pages of the book. In doing so, he is certainly not negating the extraordinary potential of her marriage as an Austrian princess, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, to the future French King Louis XVI. Stefan Zweig, in his famous biography of Marie Antoinette, 1 published in 1932, describes her as an “average woman” (a strict translation of the original German would be “a mediocre character”). Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, “Marie Antoinette in Court Dress” (1778), oil on canvas, 107.5” x 76”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Several replicas of it were made, including one in the Palace of Versailles.Stefan Zweig’s The Portrait of an Average Woman, Seen Through Painting by Judith Brown ![]() The presentation of this second portrait was a big success. Repeating the pose of the first painting, she dressed the Queen this time in a classic blue-grey silk dress, marking the implicit support of Marie-Antoinette for the silk-weavers of Lyon. Vigée-Le Brun then quickly painted a second portrait to be exhibited before the end of the Salon. The visitors of the Salon were shocked by this portrait: in their view the Queen was not dressed as befitted her rank. Adapted to Parisian fashion by the dressmaker Rose Bertin, this muslin dress was the Queen’s favourite one during her stays at the Petit Trianon, away from the court. Vigée-Le Brun presented notably a new portrait of the Queen wearing the “gaulle” or “blouse dress”. ![]() In the same year, she exhibited for the first time in the Salon. On, Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, the Queen’s protégée, was received into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture along with her rival, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
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