French landscape garden

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Temple de l'Amour created for Marie Antoinette and the Jardin de la Reine at Versailles
Marie Antoinette's idyllic Hameau de la Reine at Versailles

The French landscape garden (French: jardin anglais, jardin à l'anglaise, jardin paysager, jardin pittoresque, jardin anglo-chinois)[1] is a style of garden inspired by idealized romantic landscapes and the paintings of Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, European ideas about Chinese gardens, and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The style originated in England as the English landscape garden in the early 18th century, and spread to France where, in the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century, it gradually replaced the rigidly clipped and geometrical French formal garden (jardin à la française).[2][3]

The decline of the jardin à la française

Main article: French formal garden
The gardens of Versailles

Even during the lifetime of

Hardouin-Mansart.[4]
After the military defeats of France at the beginning of the 18th century and the freezing winter of 1709, the royal treasury was unable to finance upkeep of the elaborate gardens of Versailles. Trees were untrimmed, gardens and paths were overgrown. France was ready for the introduction of a new style of gardens.

The influence of the English garden

Main article: English landscape garden
Eyecatching pantheon at Stourhead estate

The French landscape garden was influenced first of all by the new style of

Bowood (1763) and Blenheim Palace (1769).[5] Another later influence was the gardens of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill (beginning 1750), where Gothic ruins replaced antique temples.[6]

Descriptions of

English gardens were first brought to France by the Abbé Le Blanc, who published accounts of his voyage in 1745 and 1751. A treatise on the English garden, Observations on Modern Gardening, written by Thomas Whately and published in London in 1770, was translated into French in 1771. After the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, French noblemen were able to voyage to England and see the gardens for themselves. During the French Revolution, many French nobles went into exile in England, and brought back with them the new style of gardening.[7]

The Chinese influence on the French landscape garden

Main article: Chinese garden
Chinese pagoda in the gardens of Chanteloup

In 1743, Father Attiret, a French Jesuit priest and painter in service to the Emperor of China, wrote a series of letters describing the

Yuanming Yuan near Beijing
:

A beautiful disorder reigns almost everywhere. An anti-symmetry. Everything works on this principle: it is a pastoral and natural countryside that one wants to represent: a solitude and not a well-ordered palace following all the rules of symmetry and proportions.[8]

Attiret's letters were a success in both France and in England, where they were translated and published in 1752. They had an important influence on what became known as the Anglo-Chinese garden.

In 1757

Sir William Chambers, an English writer and traveller who made three trips to China, published a book called Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils, with a chapter about gardens. The book was quickly translated into French. Chambers brought to Europe the Chinese idea that gardens should be composed of a series of scenes which evoke different emotions, ranging from enchantment to horror to laughter. Chambers wrote, "The enchanted or romanesque scenes abound in the marvellous. They provoke a series of violent or opposing sensations; footpaths leading down to underground passages where mysterious lights reveal strange groupings; winding roads which pass through beautiful forests leading to precipices or melancholy rivers lined with funerary monuments shaded by laurels and willows. The horrible scenes present hanging rocks, cataracts, caverns, dead tree broken by the storm, burnt or shattered by lightning, and buildings in ruins... The scenes of horror are only one act in a theatrical production that usually ends in a soothing extended perspective, simple forms and beautiful colors. The laughing scenes make one forget the enchantment and the horror of the landscapes that one has passed through."[9]

Chambers became the creator of the first Chinese garden in Europe, complete with the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens, in the southwest of London. Chambers' book and the Chinese garden he created at Kew Gardens brought Chinese gardens into fashion in both England and France. Landscape gardens in France began to include artificial hills, pagodas, and promenades designed to provoke emotions ranging from melancholy to sadness to joy.[10]

Rousseau's philosophy of the landscape garden

The Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Ermenonville, created 1764–1776 by the Marquis de Vauvray
Rousseau's cenotaph on Île des Peupliers, a lake island at Ermenonville

The ideas of the French philosopher

Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse Rousseau imagined a perfect landscape, where people could be true to themselves. This imaginary garden became a model for French landscape gardens. The French historian Jurgis wrote: "the theme of this Paradise, once restored by setting free flowers, earth and water, was the guiding principle in the development of landscape gardens. It was a glorification of that which had long been denatured by artifice." In opposing his Elysian Fields, the Orchard at Clarens to the serried trees sculpted into parasols, fans, marmosets, and dragons, Rousseau reawakens this myth with its new liberties.[12]

Rousseau visited England in 1761 and saw the famous gardens, including that at Stowe, but he criticized the mish-mash of different styles there. "It is composed of very beautiful and picturesque places, of which different features have been chosen from different countries," he wrote. "It all seems natural, except the assembly."[13]

Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire while staying there; he died there of kidney failure in July 1778. His remains were placed in a tomb in a grove of poplar trees on a small island in the lake.[Note 1]

Girardin made the park at Ermenonville a living illustration of Rousseau's ideas; making carefully constructed landscapes, like paintings, designed to invite the visitor to take long walks and to feel pure and simple emotions.[Note 2] The paths were designed to follow the hillsides, climbing up and down, to give a various view, from shadows of groves of trees to sunlight, and meandering to let the viewer delight the scene from different angles and light. Girardin described the purpose of his garden in a book called De la composition des paysages (1777) ("On the Composition of Landscapes"):

If you wish to have true joy, you must always search for the simplest ways and find amusements which conform to nature, because those pleasures are the only ones that are true and lasting.[14]

The principles taken from Rousseau and transformed into avenues and landscapes by Girardin and other garden designers were copied in landscape gardens around France.[15]

Painters and the symbolism of the landscape garden

Claude Lorrain's paintings influenced the appearance of the landscape gardens in England and France
Model of an Egyptian pyramid in Parc Monceau

The views in landscape gardens were rarely copied from real nature; they were more often inspired by romantic paintings, particularly those of Nicolas Poussin, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, who depicted Arcadian landscapes with mythological scenes.[16] In France they were influenced by the paintings and drawings of Hubert Robert, who depicted romantic scenes of crumbling antique ruins seen during his visits to Italy. Robert himself became a garden designer, contributing to the landscape garden at Betz and the Hameau de la Reine at Versailles.

Landscape gardens were designed to be allegories, taken from literature and painting, and filled with symbols and messages. They were usually either recreations of the Garden of Eden or of the pastoral Arcadia of Roman myths, or they were designed to offer a visual tour of the history of mankind or of all the world. The landscape was not enough – it had to have architecture. The French gardens were filled with fabriques de jardin, imitations of Roman temples, ruins or tombs.

The gardens at Betz, created by the Duc d'Harcourt and the painter Hubert Robert for the

Doric temple, a Chinese kiosk, a Druid temple, and the ruins of a medieval chapel. The gardens of the Château de Bagatelle at Paris contained follies in the form of the temple of the God Pan, the house of the Chinese philosopher, a Pharaoh's tomb, and a hermit's cell.[17] As the architect Louis Carrogis Carmontelle wrote about the garden he created at Monceau, "Let us vary the regions so that we may forget where we are. Let us change the scenes of a garden like the decors at the Opera; let us show what the most able painters can offer as decoration; all periods and all places."[17]

The influence of explorers and botanists on the French landscape garden

The 18th and early 19th century was an age of discovery and enormous activity in the natural sciences, botany and horticulture. Explorers, diplomats and missionaries were instructed to bring new species of plants to France, where they were acclimated in special gardens at the seaports. In 1764 the

La Pérouse (1741–1788) brought back numerous plants which made their way into French gardens. Thanks to their discoveries, French landscape gardens were soon ornamented with exotic trees and colorful flowers not seen before in Europe.[19]

Chronology of notable landscape gardens in France

The Moulin Joly (1754–1772)

The Moulin Joly ("Pretty Mill"), designed by the landscape architect

Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Marie Antoinette visited several times.[22]

Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Main article: Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau

René Louis de Girardin, who spent time as an officer in the army of Louis XV before retiring to his estate. He had visited Italy, Switzerland, Germany and England, and was familiar with the early English landscape gardens. He was particularly inspired by the garden of the British poet William Shenstone, The Leasowes, which became the model for Ermenonville.[22]

In 1776 Girardin published a book, A la composition des paysages (On the Composition of Landscapes), which laid out his theories of gardens, theories that quoted the French translation of a book on gardening by Thomas Whately, and the Théorie des jardins of Jean-Marie Morel (1776).

The Temple of Philosophy at Ermenonville

Girardin created the garden at Ermenonville to be a series of tableaux to be seen from various points at different times of day. The artist Hubert Robert contributed drawings for its design. The park occupied 100 hectares (250 acres), lying in a valley along the River Launette. It took ten years to build the garden; ponds needed to be drained and the river had to be diverted. The gardens were ornamented with follies representing a Gothic tower, an obelisk, the Temple of Philosophy (left unfinished to represent the incompleteness of human knowledge), and a hermit's hut.[17]

The 17th-century mansion sat on an island in the middle; northwards was all farmland, and to the west, towards the village, was Le Désert, a

Mediaeval
themes.

The philosopher

Pantheon in Paris near the remains of Voltaire
.

Because of its connection with Rousseau, the garden has attracted many famous visitors, including

Napoleon Bonaparte.[23]

The Chateau de Pompignan (works 1745–1780, garden mainly 1766–1774)

Main article:
Chateau de Pompignan

This landscape garden with its

Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan, a friend of Rousseau.[Note 3] It featured picturesque structures and mysterious ruins, and the walks and views took advantage of the park's site on a hillside overlooking the Garonne valley and, in the far distance, the chain of the Pyrenees
, stretched out along the southern horizon. The chateau is still inhabited, and although the parc has been neglected for a very long time, vestiges of the works and walks are still to be seen.

Parc Monceau, Paris (1773–1778)

Main article: Parc Monceau

Parc Monceau was designed by

Philippe Egalité
, to design a garden around a small house that he was building to the northwest of Paris. Between 1773 and 1778, he created the folie de Chartres (now Parc Monceau), one of the most famous French landscape gardens of the time.

It departed from the more natural English landscape gardens of the time by presenting a series of fantastic scenes designed "to unite in one garden all places and all times." It included a series of fabriques, or architectural structures, while it illustrated all the styles known at the time: antiquity, exoticism, Chinese, Turkish, ruins, tombs, and rustic landscapes, all created to surprise and divert the visitor.

Désert de Retz, Yvelines (1774–1782)

Main article: Désert de Retz
La Colonne détruite

The garden was created by François Racine de Monville (1734–1797), a French aristocrat, musician, architect and landscape designer. In 1774, de Monville bought a country estate at Saint-Jacques-de-Retz, which had a farm, lands, and a formal jardin à la française. He resolved to create a new garden in the new English style. He called the garden le Désert de Retz,[Note 4] and planted it with four thousand trees from the royal greenhouses, and rerouted a river and created several ponds.

The garden, completed in 1785, contained twenty-one follies, or architectural constructions, representing different periods of history and parts of the world; they included an artificial rock, a temple of rest, a theatre, a Chinese house, a tomb, a ruined Gothic church, a ruined altar, an obelisk, a temple to the god

Pan, a Siamese tent, and an ice-house in the form of a pyramid. The best-known feature was the ruined classical column, "La Colonne détruite", large enough to hold a residence inside.[24]

The rustic village (hameau) as garden feature

Further information: Ferme ornée
A cottage in the Hameau de Chantilly

Along with the development of the French landscape garden, there was a parallel development in the 18th century of

Prince de Condé conceived an entire rustic village, the Hameau de Chantilly, for his estate at the Château de Chantilly. The little village was modelled on a farm in Normandy, and had seven buildings with thatched roofs, designed by architect Jean-François Leroy. The exteriors were rustic, but the interiors were extremely elegant, and used for concerts, games, and dinners. They were used for a reception for members of the Russian imperial court in 1782.[25]

Jardin de la reine, Versailles, (1774–1779)

In 1749 Louis XV had created a "jardin d'instruction" next to the gardens of Versailles, with domestic animals, a kitchen garden, and a botanical garden of plants brought from around the world. In 1750, he added a pavilion, designed by

Château de Louveciennes
.

On his death the still unfinished property passed back into the possession of the new king, Louis XVI, who in 1774, presented it to his wife

Marie-Antoinette. She had the house completed and commanded that a new garden be built in the new fashionable Anglo-Chinese style. The garden was designed by Richard Mique, Antoine Richard, and painter Hubert Robert. Richard was responsible for the choice of trees and plants, and Mique and Robert took charge of the composition and the follies, or architectural constructions.[26]

Belvédère and the Grand Rocher in the Petit Trianon gardens

The garden was conceived around a small stream whose source was in an artificial mountain called the "Grand Rocher". On one side was a butte with an octagonal belvedere on top. The Belvédère was also known as the pavilion of music, and was decorated with murals inspired by the paintings of Pompeii. The stream wound through the garden, and was crossed by bridges or stones. It formed an island on which was placed the Temple de l'Amour.[26]

The construction of the garden required the destruction of the old botanical gardens which had formal layouts and several of the greenhouses. Some of the plants were incorporated into the new gardens, while others were sent to other royal gardens and the new Botanical Gardens in Paris.

In 1783 Marie Antionette ordered the creation of the Hameau de la Reine, the most famous of all the rustic villages created for gardens of the period. Between 1783 and 1787, the hamlet was thus created in the spirit of a Normandy village, with eleven houses spread out around the a lake. Five of the buildings were actual residences for staff engaged in farm work, while several contained suites of rooms for the queen and her guests to relax in.

Other gardens

See also

Notes

  1. Panthéon in Paris after the French Revolution
    .
  2. ^ Perhaps the best English equivalent would be Capability Brown.
  3. ^ One of the few works of Lefranc to be read at all today and considered by some to be his masterpiece is his Ode sur la mort de Jean-Baptiste Rousseau [citation to come]. 'The Marquis felt himself to be very close to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose memory he honored in a celebrated and vengeful ode, and with whom he shared the same feeling of persecution justifying the escape into solitude, and the same taste for a healing Nature in the face of life's disillusionment'. (From the French in:Le Parc À Fabriques du Chateau de Pompignan: Une Illustration de l’Art des Jardins dans le Midi de la France, Yves et Marie-Françoise Cranga Archived 2011-05-31 at the Wayback Machine, in Memoirs de la Société Archéologique du Midi de la France, Toulouse, 2003, p. 198, footnote 51.)
  4. ^ The term 'désert' was defined at the time in the original French Encyclopedia as "a place propitious for cultivating dreams and nostalgia."

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-19-100417-9
    .
  2. ^ Baltrušaitis 1978.
  3. ^ Wenzler 2003, p. 27.
  4. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, p. 313.
  5. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, pp. 280–283.
  6. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, p. 280.
  7. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, pp. 316–318.
  8. ^ Baltrušaitis 1978, p. 23.
  9. ^ Cited in Baltrušaitis 1978, pp. 13–14
  10. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, pp. 316–317.
  11. ^ Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1762). Émile, ou de l'Éducation ("Emile, or On Education") (in French).
  12. ^ Baltrušaitis 1978, p. 9.
  13. ^ Rousseau, Jean-Jaques (1761). "letter XI". Julie ou La Nouvelle Heloise. Vol. 4.
  14. ^ de Girandin, R. L. (1777). De la composition des paysages. Geneva.
  15. ^ Racine 2001, pp. 169–177.
  16. ^ Prévôt 2006, p. 181.
  17. ^ a b c Baltrušaitis 1978, p. 11.
  18. ^ Baltrušaitis 1978, p. 51.
  19. ^ Racine 2001, p. 249.
  20. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006.
  21. ^ Monique Mosser, Charles Watelet 1718–1786, Createurs des jardins et paysages de la Renaissance au debut du XIX siecle, Arles, Actes Sud.
  22. ^ a b Allain & Christiany 2006, p. 319.
  23. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, p. 322.
  24. ^ Article by Julien Cendres in Racine 2001, p. 167.
  25. ^ Allain & Christiany 2006, p. 342.
  26. ^ a b Allain & Christiany 2006, p. 340.

Bibliography

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