Athenaeum, May 10, 1856, no. 1489, p. 589 Art Journal, 1856, p. 163 Richard and Samuel Redgrave, A Century of Painters of the English School, 2nd. ed., 1890, p. 434 E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds., The Works of John Ruskin, 1903-12, XIV, p. 52
Provenance
Executors of Jas. Arden, Esq (and sold: Christie's, London, April 26, 1879, lot 77) Birch (acquired at the above sale) Sir. Basil E. Mayhew, K.B.E. (and sold: Christie's, London, July 27, 1957, lot 134) Mitchell (acquired at the above sale) Private Collector (and sold: Christie's, London, June 12, 1992, lot 109, illustrated) Pyms Gallery, London Acquired from the above in 2000
Notes
Edward Matthew Ward built his career on history painting. From 1836-1839, the young Englishman studied in Rome, where he won the silver medal of the Academy of St. Luke for his historical compositions, and then visited Paris and Munich to experiment with fresco painting. Back in London, his 1843 cartoon of Boadicea earned him solid reviews, and in 1852 he earned the commission of eight subjects from English eighteenth century history. Ward's career focused almost exclusively on English seventeenth and eighteenth-century history--but episodes from the Napoleonic era and the French Revolution, such as the present work, were his specialty. His style matched that of the celebrated French painter Paul Delaroche, whose works, like The Execution of Lady Jane Gray (1833, National Gallery, London), heightened the drama of historical moments.
Ward combined his rigorous training, the influence of artists like Delaroche, and history's vibrant narratives in his powerful The Last Parting of Marie Antoinette and Her Son. The immediately celebrated picture solidified a reputation for the artist who only the year before had been elected a member of the Royal Academy. The Art Journal's review exclaimed "We cannot too highly praise the dispositions; the composition is not thronged with useless material; every object has its voice in the story. Upon the whole, we think, it cannot fail to be pronounced the best of the pictures which the artist has executed upon the history of these 'unfortunates'" (p. 163). These '"unfortunates'" and their narrative were aptly described in the Academy catalogue, which placed the scene at "The Prison of the Temple. Persons present: The Queen, her son [the "lost" dauphin, Louis XVII] and daughter [Maria Theresa Charlotte], the sister of Louis XVI [Elisabeth of France], and the members of the Revolutionary Committee. 'At Last, the Queen, having collected all her energies, seated herself, drew her son near to her, and placed both her hands on his little shoulders; calm, motionless, so absorbed in grief, that she neither wept nor sighed. She said to him, in a grave and solemn voice: 'My child, you are going to leave us: remember your duties when I am no longer near to remind you of them; never forget the merciful God who has appointed you this trial, as your mother, who loves you...' she said these words, kissed her son on the forehead, and gave him back to the goalers."
While such illustrative writing added even more power to Ward's image, contemporary audiences likely needed little guidance in interpreting the painting. The French Revolution had a great influence on British intellectual, philosophical, and political life in the nineteenth century. Writers and artists from Thomas Paine to William Blake saw the Revolution as a symbolic act of the triumph of reason over privilege, and a prediction of humanity's return to a state of perfection from corruption. Others appreciated the Revolution's emphasis of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" as evocative of the ideals of England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. In somewhat less philosophical appreciation, in the years surrounding Ward's exhibition of The Last Parting of Marie Antoinette and her Son, dozens of accounts of the doomed court of Louis XVI had been published in England with a significant majority of them focused on the already-legendary life of Marie Antoinette. In popular works like "The Memoirs of Marie Antoinette" published in The New Monthly Magazine, historic accounts were blended with fictionalized elements to heighten the dramatic story of the "clever and courageous" French queen lodged with her children in the second story of the Temple Prison tower in 1792 ("Memoirs of Marie Antoinette in The New Monthly Magazine, London, 1858, p. 143). These writings closely mirrored Ward's visualization of the imprisoned Royal Family. As the present work illustrates with the embroidery frame, balls of yarn, open book, and cracked slate, despite their peril, the queen devoted herself to maintaining some sense of normalcy, educating her children while "the rest of the day was relieved by needlework, reading, or music" ("Memoirs," p. 145). While initially the royal family was treated well and was permitted to live together, after the King's trial and guillotine in January 21, 1793, jailers decided to separate the young Louis Charles from his mother (the dauphin ultimately died in prison at the age of 10), then her daughter (the only member of the family to survive, released in 1795), before she was taken to the Conciegerie Prison, never again seeing her children before her execution on October 15, 1793. The parting of the Queen from her son was imagined as a "sad and cruel scene" so wrenching that it must even have "melted the heart" of the jailers ("Memoirs," p. 144). Ward's Revolutionaries appear more hard-hearted, with one brutish, bearded figure dressed in blood red, another holding a written decree and a watch aloft to suggest that time is indeed up for the family. The artist brilliantly captures both the historic importance of Marie Antoinette's story and the universal emotional truth and stoic solemnity of a mother saying goodbye to a child whose wide, blue eyes and awkward posture suggest he, unlike his older sister grasping his hand, does not understand what is about to happen.
In their A Century of Painters of the English School, Richard and Samuel Redgrave considered The Last Parting of Marie Antoinette and Her Son "one of the best and most popular" of the artist's works (p. 434). Ward would go on to paint scenes from Marie Antoinette's last days in at least three others subjects including Marie Antoinette Listening to the Act of Accusation, the day Before her Trial (1859)and Marie Antoinette In the Prison the Conciegerie, 1795 (1873, Sold: Sotheby's, London, June 15, 2000, lot 309, illustrated). Additionally, the present work and its subject's popularity are further suggested by Ward's reduction of the same subject commissioned years later.
