The French landscape garden () 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 ().
The decline of the jardin à la française
Even during the lifetime of Louis XIV and his gardens of Versailles, the formal, symmetrical was criticized by writers La Fontaine, Madame de Sévigné, Fénelon and Saint-Simon for imposing tyranny over nature; demonstrating human mastery over nature was indeed part of its intention. In 1709, in his influential book on garden design, Dezallier d'Argenville called for garden designers to pay more attention to nature than to art, though still suggesting highly formal designs. Signs of a new, more natural style were seen in the design of the bosquet des Sources at the Trianon, created by André Le Nôtre, and in the bosquets of the Château de Marly, created by Hardouin-Mansart. 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
The French landscape garden was influenced first of all by the new style of English landscape garden, particularly those of William Kent at Stowe (1730–1748) and Rousham (1738–1741), and the garden by Henry Hoare at Stourhead (begun in 1741), which were themselves inspired by trips to Italy and filled with recreations of antique temples. Later, the gardens of Capability Brown, who had studied with William Kent, had an important influence in France, particularly his work at Stowe (1748), Petworth (1752), Chatsworth (1761), Bowood (1763) and Blenheim Palace (1769). Another later influence was the gardens of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill (beginning 1750), where Gothic ruins replaced antique temples.
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.
The Chinese influence on the French landscape garden
In 1743, Father Attiret, a French Jesuit priest and painter in service to the Emperor of China, wrote a series of letters describing the Chinese gardens he had seen. In particular he described the Emperor's summer residence, Yuanming Yuan near Beijing:
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."Cited in
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.
Rousseau's philosophy of the landscape garden
The ideas of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) had a major influence on the landscape garden, and he himself was buried in the first important such garden in France, at Ermenonville. Rousseau wrote in 1762, on the "nobility of nature": "Everything is good when it leaves the hand of the creator"; "Everything degenerates in Man's hands." In his novel 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.
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."
René Louis de Girardin, who created the park at Ermenonville, was an avid pupil of Rousseau. He designed the garden to illustrate the idyllic landscapes described in Rousseau's books. He travelled to Paris, was introduced to Rousseau, and persuaded him to visit the garden and stay in a small cottage designed to resemble the house of Julie, called Elysee, described in La Nouvelle Heloise. Rousseau came to visit in May 1778 and revised and continued writing 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.His remains were later moved to the Panthéon in Paris after the French Revolution.
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.Perhaps the best English equivalent would be Capability Brown. 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 (1777) ("On the Composition of Landscapes"):
The principles taken from Rousseau and transformed into avenues and landscapes by Girardin and other garden designers were copied in landscape gardens around France.
Painters and the symbolism of the landscape garden
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. 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 Princess of Monaco, were supposed to be a journey around the world. The different parts of the world were represented by an obelisk, a 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. 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."
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 larch tree was imported from England to France, soon after the cedar of Lebanon. The dahlia and the chrysanthemum, hydrangea and mimosa were imported from Mexico to France. The reverend Charles Plumier (1646–1704) brought back the magnolia, the fuchsia and the begonia from Latin America. Louis Feuilée (1660–1732) brought the calceolaria, oxalis, opuntia and papaya. Pierre Nicholas Le Chéron d'Incarville (1706–1757) introduced Sophora japonica. Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777) brought the first cedar to be planted in France (1734), while his brother Joseph de Jussieu (1704–1779) introduced heliotrope. The explorers Bougainville (1729–1811) and 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.
Chronology of notable landscape gardens in France
The Moulin Joly (1754–1772)