TRUE PERSPECTIVE

2015, Oil on Italian Linen, 60 x 50cm

There’s a lot to be said for being good at one’s job.

Excellence provides fulfilment and purpose. Baron Jules David Cromot Bourg, Superintendent of Finance for the Louis XVIII, was just such a man. In this role he used the riches of the state (partly to amass his own personal fortune, as was the norm) to maintain the lavish royal lifestyle. In short, he was the King’s party planner.

The culmination of his career was an extravagant celebration in 1776 in honour of the King and Marie Antoinette. It is something of an irony then, that it was the perceived (and real) excesses of this lifestyle that led them all to the guillotine.

With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps they would have been all better off had the Baron been crap at his job