vivelareine:

French Salon of the Louis XVI Period, c. 1780

This interior was gifted to The Art Institute of Chicago in 1941 by Mrs. James Ward Thorne, who desgined the room “entirely in the spirit of Marie Antoinette—dainty in coloring and full of her symbols of design.”

Mrs. Thorne’s design was heavily inspired by the private rooms of the Petit Trianon, which were designed in the Marie Antoinette’s preferred style. Of the Petit Trianon, Thorne wrote:

“Nothing could be more chaste, more restrained. This was Marie Antoinatte’s favorite retreat and it is here that I always feel her shadow.”