As wife of the Dauphin of France later Louis XVI, she made the huge and sumptuous Palace of Versailes her playground … and turned a deaf ear to the cries of starving peasants clamouring at the gates. Quoted from Victoria Holt's book "The Queen's Confession."
She was frivolous, indulgent and pleasure-loving. Marie Antoinette danced her way to revolution and disaster.
SO why do I honour her with this acrylic work? Because the decadence of the Court blinded her to reality. And perhaps, more so, because in her prime she graced and gave patronage to the arts and fashion, a fickle world she was to learn. So, it's not that I honour her decadent lifestyle, but that period of history in the 1770s+ that produced a pompous and extravagant fashion, not just in clothes and large hairstyles, but most of all in the interiors of the homes of the aristocracy.
The last Queen of France (an Austrian woman) "squandered the finances of France, the fruit of the people's sweat, for her pleasure and intrigues." (Victoria Holt). It's a very sad story.
Here, the height of fancy!
The Trianon, her special place of refuge especially made for her.
And her own 'made-up' hamlet:
