Marie-Antoinette à la rose

Earlier in 1783, Vigee Le Brun had shown the queen at the Salon in a loose white muslin dress, the kind of thing you might wear in a garden, and it caused an uproar. Critics said a queen of France had been painted looking as if she were in her underclothes, one sneering that it should be called France dressed as Austria. The picture was taken down. So the painter produced this replacement in a hurry, the same pose and the same rose in hand, but now Marie Antoinette wears a proper grey silk court gown with lace and pearls. The muslin dress she had first worn went on to become a fashion across Europe.