In Praise Of Folly

Ever since the advent of photography, its  promise of absolute realism in representation has been qualified by acts of human ingenuity, before, during, and after the picture is taken.  Our vexation at the complexities of a seemingly straightforward medium is encapsulated in the quip: "Who are you going to believe - me or your lying eyes?"

As if on cue, a white swan glides past a small stone house.  An idyllic winter day in the country, with snow on the roof, but not too much,  no obvious signs of travail and no hint of ice on the water to trap the stately waterfowl. 

We could be looking at a village in Normandy but it turns out to be Le Hameau de la Reine, the queen's hamlet, built in 1783 for Marie Antoinette by her favorite architect Richard Mique on the grounds at Versailles.  Loyal to the end, Mique  ( "un artist savant, habile, et digne de plus de gloire" - par Anne Higonnet) and his son were executed by a tribunal of the revolution for trying to save the life of his queen.  

Model farms were among the favorite playthings of the French aristocracy in the 18th century, providing the excuse for adults to indulge in dress-up, costuming themselves as milkmaids  and shepherdesses.  The painter Fragonard duly recorded such happy moments, but to an enraged citizenry they may have looked like evidence of folly.  Today, Le Hameau is classified as a folly by architects, meaning that it was designed for pleasure or that is was  a  fake, like a Potemkin village designed for another 18th century monarch, Catherine the Great of Russia. 

But there is a difference between the artificial and the fake, and Marie Antoinette intended her model farm as more than a plaything.  It provided food for the royal family, a home and a livelihood for poor local peasants and an example of  virtuous self-reliance to the nobility.  Orchards and gardens were cultivated, cows provided milk, chickens laid eggs, and fish from the ponds were caught and cooked.  It even offered a  respite from the cavernous spaces of the thousand rooms of the chateau, a  more human sense of scale. 

Where this photograph fits in the story, the viewer decides.

For further reading:

Versailles and the Trianon by Pierre de Nolhac New York, Dood, Mead & Company: 1906.

Marie Antoinette, the Life of an Average Woman by Stefan Zweig, translated form the German by Eden and Cedar Paul, New York, Viking Press: 1933.

Image: Jean-Baptiste Leroux - Le colombier du Hameau de la Reine sous la neige. Versailles, Collection Jean-Baptiste Leroux, Paris, RMN.