3-028-552 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Happy Days of Marie Antoinette", by P. R. Morris, 1870. Engraving from a painting. 'Who does not retain a vivid recollection of the tremendous contrasts in that sad story of the hapless French Queen? "In her brief interval of happiness [says an eloquent writer,] her spouse Louis XVI. built for her the chateau of the Petit Trianon, in the grounds of Versailles, to which she withdrew from the severe etiquette of the Court, to find unalloyed pleasure in the society of her children. She did not see the storm impending that in six short years was to burst over her loved ones and herself." When the storm did burst the gentle young mother of this picture did not forget the fortitude becoming a Queen...amid the undeserved execration of the mob, and when following her harmless husband to the scaffold. When we have reminded the reader that the pretty little fellow here amusing himself with feeding the gold-fishes of one of the garden fountains is the unfortunate Dauphin, who survived his mother by one year only...we need add nothing further by way of pointing the pathetic contrast. The picture is in the Winter Exhibition at the Old Bond-street Gallery'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.