Marie Antoinette and her quest for a simple life

Through her marriage in 1770 to the Dauphin of France Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was destined to be in the public eye. She certainly had her own personal style, and the financial means and strength of character to express it through her choice of couturiers, portrait painters, decorators, and the recipients of her commissions. The extent to which her penchants were a reaction to the conventions and restrictions of the French Court is hard to determine, but there is a brief period of just a few years from the late 1770s when Marie Antoinette was able to pursue her pared down, yet ultimately luxurious aesthetic, before the clouds of revolution sealed her fate.

Maria Antonia was the 15^th child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria. Although privately tutored Maria Antonia was not a natural scholar, at the age of ten she could not write correctly in German, nor in French and Italian, the languages of the Court, and her conversational skills were poor. The young archduchess gravitated to music where she excelled, she played the harp, harpsichord and flute and had a good singing voice, she also liked to dance, aided by her ‘exquisite poise’. More tuition came from Mathieu-Jacques de Vermond, dispatched in 1768 by King Louis XV of France, he found Maria Antonia to be ‘rather lazy and extremely frivolous’ but that ‘her character, her heart, are excellent’. The Duke of Choiseul attempted to style Maria Antonia according to French royalty, a French dentist attended to her teeth, her wardrobe was expanded and her hair was dressed in a manner reminiscent of Madame de Pompadour – until 1751, the chief mistress of King Louis XV. Finally, her walk was fashioned as a glide as practised at the Court of Versailles.      

Maria Antonia’s marriage to Louis Auguste was a diplomatic coup for Maria Theresa, she sought to end hostilities with Austria’s long-time enemy, France, and provide a counterbalance to the territorial ambitions of Prussia and Great Britain. On her arrival in France Maria Antonia became Marie Antoinette, and for three years Versailles was her home and she rarely left it. Finally, in June 1773 Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin formally visited Paris, the event was called the ‘Joyeuse Entrée’, hitherto Parisians had only seen the Dauphine through her portraits and from the balcony at the Palais des Tuileries the young couple were greeted by enthusiastic crowds.

Marie-Jeanne ‘Rose’ Bertin (1747-1813) was an important figure in the ‘presentation’ of Marie Antoinette.  She was born in Abbeville, a town associated with textile manufacture, and aged nine was apprenticed to a fashion merchant. By the mid-1660s Bertin was in Paris working for Madame Pagalle whose clients included the aristocracy, and in 1770 she opened her own shop, Le Grand Mogol, and was soon producing garments for noble ladies-in-waiting to the Dauphine. In the Summer of 1774 Marie Antoinette was introduced to Bertin, and a year later was commissioned to make the Dauphine’s coronation robes. The costume was appropriately symbolic, in blue silk, representing the authority and status of the French monarchy, with a floor length fleur-de-lys and ermine trimmed robe, the silk dress was extravagantly decorated with diamonds and precious stones. Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty (1740-1786), the portrait specialist, captured Marie Antoinette in her coronation finery, and the work was intended for Empress Maria Theresa. Marie Antoinette had been deeply unhappy with the portraits from the first years of her husband’s reign, and in 1775, five years after their marriage, the royal couple were still childless and the Queen was vulnerable. Dagoty’s task was to show Marie Antoinette as beautiful and regal, she poses with her right hand on a globe, the 1722 crown of Louis XV, used at Louis XVI’s 1775 coronation, rests on a velvet cushion and a harp and a pile of books also appear – to stress Marie Antoinette’s musical skills and patronage of the arts. The portrait was not received well, it was felt to be too contrived, and Dagoty appears to be pre-occupied in capturing the magnificence of Marie Antoinette’s attire, which cascades through and dominates the canvas, rather than projecting the sense of her character and spirit. Two years later the portrait was offered to Georg Adam, Prince of Starhemberg, an Austrian diplomat and minister and a close confidant of Empress Maria Theresa, and it remained in his family for many years.       

Marie Antoinette was introduced to the portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1840) in 1778; Vigée Le Brun had painted professionally since her early teens, and she steered away from the highly ornamental and dramatic flourishes of the High Rococo style, seen in art – notably the output of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) – architecture and decoration, and predominant during the reign of Louis XV. In 1774 Vigée Le Brun was made a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc, the guild of painters and sculptors founded in 1391 and abolished in 1776, attracted artists, many of whom were women, not accepted by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. In 1776 Vigée Le Brun had secured her first royal commission, the portrait of the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, and so her path to Marie Antoinette was secured. The first portrait of Marie Antoinette in 1778, one of many, was well received by Empress Maria Theresa in the Spring of 1779 and she wrote to her daughter, ‘Your large portrait delights me!’.

In 1783 Vigée Le Brun was invited to show at the Paris Salon, and Marie Antoinette allowed her most recent portrait, Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress, to be exhibited. The Queen is presented in pastoral dress, without jewels, her muslin gown accessorised with a blue sash and topped with a straw hat – the costume was designed by Rose Bertin. French society was ruffled, the portrait appeared to show an undignified Queen in her under-garments, role-playing as a country girl. At this time Marie Antoinette was mostly living at Le Petit Trianon, gifted to her by Louis XIV in 1774. In the same year as the scandalous Paris Salon portrait the Hameau de la Reine (Queen’s hamlet) was created in the park of the Palace of Versailles, close to Le Petit Trianon. It featured a number of buildings, a farmhouse, dairy, dovecote, boudoir, barn, mill and a tower fashioned as a lighthouse, each with its own flower garden or orchard. The private estate provided Marie Antoinette with a quiet, secluded refuge away from the bustle and business of the Court. There is no evidence that she ‘dressed up’ as a milk maid or shepherdess, but here she took private walks with friends and hosted informal suppers, and away from Court formalities and frivolities Marie Antoinette typically dressed as she was depicted in her 1783 portrait.

Marie Antoinette Style features a plate from the 295-piece Sèvres porcelain service, Perles et Barbeaux, ordered in July 1781 for use at Le Petit Trianon and delivered in January 1782. Sèvres employed around twenty painters and many gilders to work on the commission. The decoration in blue, green and white and underlined in gold, is simple, elegant and refined, and luxurious. The design features cornflowers, in bouquets and individually, surrounded by rows of pearls – both motifs closely associated with the Queen. The pearls set on a green border were personally chosen by Marie Antoinette, and despite being known in 18^th century France as weeds found in corn fields, cornflowers grew in abundance in the English style gardens at Le Petit Trianon, and also decorated the soft furnishings and furniture in the Queen’s private apartments. The cornflower might be considered rustic but in the context of Le Petit Trianon and the Sèvres service it became a high-status bloom. And, as for the pearls, they have always been rare and expensive, worn and coveted for centuries by royalty or those with the requisite purchasing power. The November 2018 auction, Royal Jewels from the Bourbon-Parma Family, included jewels owned by Marie Antoinette, many of these were natural pearls, and her pearl and diamond pendant realised the record-breaking price of $36.2m. However, since birth Marie Antoinette had only known luxury, she possibly did not regard pearls as an extravagance, and from the host of gems at her disposal she might have favoured the pearl as it is the most ‘natural’ – it is impossible to enhance a pearl, it cannot be cut and polished like a precious stone.  

Further into the 1780s Marie Antoinette’s life became complicated and troublesome, despite the welcome birth of an heir, Louis Joseph, in 1781, she was constantly accused of favouring Austria in her political manoeuvring and was actively involved in a number of unpopular dismissals and official appointments, and pamphlets detailing the alleged deviant sexual activity of the Queen and her friends were in circulation from the mid-1780s. Marie Antoinette’s carefree activities were abandoned as she became more, and disastrously so, involved in politics. She was unable to recognise France’s fundamental economic and social problems and was seen as the barrier to their satisfactory resolution. Ultimately in October 1793 Marie Antoinette was charged with high treason, depletion of the state treasury and collusion with foreign powers, most notably, Austria, and for these crimes she forfeited her life.