Landscapes of Reason and Revolution 3 Laurie Olin: the Long Shadow of André Le Nôtre: Notes on the Design of Cities, Parks, and Gardens in America David L
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A Publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies A Journal of Place Volume xıı | Number ıı | Spring 2017 Essays: On the Cusp: Landscapes of Reason and Revolution 3 Laurie Olin: The Long Shadow of André Le Nôtre: Notes on the Design of Cities, Parks, and Gardens in America David L. Hays: Mapping and “Natural” Garden Design in Late Eighteenth-Century France: The Example of Georges-Louis Le Rouge Elizabeth Hyde: Rousseau, Reverie, and the Spectacle of Botany in the Eighteenth-Century French Garden Joseph Disponzio: Parc Monceau: An Appreciation Susan Taylor-Leduc: Josephine and the Birth of the Imperial Picturesque Hugh Johnson: Precursor to the French Picturesque? Pondering the Meaning of Painshill Place Maker 20 Jill Sinclair: Alexandre de Vogüé: Vaux-le-Vicomte Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor rom a philosophi- speculation “Precursor to democratic capital of the the invitation of the Mar- known as Carmontelle, is designers to conceive garden cal and aesthetic the French Picturesque? newly formed United States, quis René-Louis de Girardin its opposite: Romanticism plots and estates as well as perspective, West- Pondering the Meaning of Washington, DC, is derived during the final years of his as exotic entertainment. regional and national land- ern culture can be Painshill,” the eighteenth- from the monumental life. She further explores the Joseph Disponzio gives us scapes in a holistic manner. surveyed as a series of century English garden is reciprocal view lines and effect of his 1761 epistolary a first-hand description of Like the people living on Fmovements coursing like a widely considered the foun- convergence of axial allées novel, Julie ou la nouvelle Monceau, which has been the cusp dividing the eigh- broad river through history. tainhead of the transition in rond points associated with Héloïse, on the develop- since the mid-nineteenth teenth and nineteenth cen- As is true of the other arts, from designed landscapes Le Nôtre’s plans. His essay ment of a botanically rich, century a much-appreciated turies, we are in the midst of designed landscapes reflect symbolically associated with further illustrates how the naturalistic garden style in public park. In addition socially turbulent times. As period and place. Their sty- monarchial absolutism to minimalist geometries in France. to observing the activities we experience uncertainty listic paradigms, however, open landscapes intended as many landscape architec- In “Josephine and the of its twenty-first-century about the future of Western are inevitably carried on emblems of parliamentary tural projects from the 1950s Birth of the Imperial Pictur- visitors, he traces the park’s culture, it is important to currents of contact to other governance and civil liberty. to the present owe no small esque,” Susan Taylor-Leduc origins as a pre-Revolution- remind ourselves of the times and other places. The Meticulously restored in debt to the linear regularity discusses how Empress ary private estate bedecked mission statement of the momentum of the river’s recent years, Painshill Park and Cartesian spatial con- Josephine Bonaparte created with exotic folies intended Foundation for Landscape flow may vary and some- appears today much as it did cepts Le Nôtre demonstrated a post-Revolutionary variant to amuse the aristocratic Studies: “To promote an times, like turbulent waters when created by its owner at Versailles and Vaux-le- on the French Picturesque guests of its libertine owner, active understanding of the of rapids rushing over rocks, Charles Hamilton between Vicomte. landscape style by emulating Louis-Philippe-Joseph meaning of place in human cultural transformation at 1738 and 1773. Its Capabil- The latter garden is con- Queen Marie-Antoinette’s d’Orléans. life.” Whether working for a particular historical cusp ity Brown-style landscape, sidered by some landscape Le Petit Trianon and Ram- David Hays explains how the protection of the planet may forge new channels which Hamilton orna- historians as Le Nôtre’s bouillet with their hameaux mapping – the representa- Earth as the home of all defined by fate and fashion. mented with garden follies masterpiece. Although des- and symbolically important tion of landscape as if from species – including our- The theme of this issue of similar to those that were ignated a French national dairies. Her essay proceeds above – played a formative selves – or stewarding our Site/Lines examines land- becoming de rigueur in landmark, Vaux-le-Vicomte to illustrate the ways in role in reshaping garden home grounds with intel- scapes in the context of one ancien régime France and the remains in private owner- which Josephine employed design in France. In devel- ligence and love, please join such cusp, that between the rest of Europe, provides an ship. Today it enjoys the such practices as botani- oping his theme in “Map- me and other supporters of classical seventeenth-cen- opportunity for the reader active stewardship of fam- cal acclimatization and ping and ‘Natural’ Garden the Foundation for Land- tury landscapes of geom- to ponder the matter of ily member Alexandre de illustration, farming, and Design in Late Eighteenth- scape Studies in fulfilling etry and authority and the English-French reciprocal Vogüé, the subject of this floriculture to demonstrate Century France: The Exam- this mission. eighteenth-century gardens influence. issue’s Place Keeper profile how a new and more “objec- ple of Georges-Louis Le of revolution and Romanti- Also taking up the theme by Jill Sinclair. tive” scientific mission Rouge,” he gives the reader With good green wishes, cism. Lines blur, of course, of international influence, Elizabeth Hyde describes could glorify the emerging an understanding of how and tradition and innova- Laurie Olin points out how the influence of Jean- nation-state in post-Revolu- the topographical represen- tion often coexist. in “The Long Shadow of Jacques Rousseau’s philoso- tionary France. tation of landscapes such as As Hugh Johnson writes André Le Nôtre: Notes on phy of nature is expressed in If the Marquis Girardin’s Parc Monceau allowed their in his chicken-versus-egg the Design of Cities, Parks, the garden of Ermenonville, Rousseau-influenced garden Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and Gardens in America” where Rousseau resided at at Ermenonville can be President the way in which Major characterized as an example Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s of Romanticism as moral 1891 plan for laying out the virtue, the Parc Monceau On the Cover: designed by Louis Carrogis, The gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte, near Paris, first private commission for André Le Nôtre in the 1650s. 2 On the Cusp: Landscapes of Reason and Revolution The Long Shadow of André Le Nôtre: Notes on the Design Italian precedents, primarily in the employment of orthogo- dramatic canals and basins. L’Enfant’s plan for the capital, a of Cities, Parks, and Gardens in America nal grids to organize blocks, streets, and public squares. baroque composition that exploited the existing topography, rt, like nature, renews itself through recycling Then, after the American Revolution, when the federal was also reminiscent of Le Nôtre’s plan for Versailles. The and recombining familiar elements and forms. government decided to build a capital, the resulting plan was Capitol building was to occupy a hilltop position analogous Artists find material in the work of their forebears influenced heavily by French baroque planning – despite the to that of the principal block of the château, and the presi- that has been previously overlooked or scorned fact that its sponsors were descendants of English aristocracy. dent’s residence (the White House) the position of the Grand and choose to reinterpret and reuse it. In some The former colonies were especially close to France as they Trianon. The axial expanse extending west below the Capi- Acases, the borrowing is overt – or, as Picasso put it, openly attempted to produce a workable government discernibly tol was envisioned as a vast tapis vert lined with pavilions or and boldly stolen. In others, it can be surreptitious or uncon- different from that of England; both Benjamin Franklin and lodges for foreign legations and administrative departments. scious. Renewed attention to some minor aspect of an earlier Thomas Jefferson spent considerable time in Paris during The tidal marsh was drained into a canal parallel to the Mall artistic creation may inspire a flourish on something new or this period as ambassadors. (where Constitution Avenue is today) for water transport. lead to fresh bodies of work, transforming an entire disci- Jefferson was charged with the task of creating a city in As immigrants flowed west throughout the nineteenth pline. And some great artists accomplish so much that for a terrain that embraced an estuary and considerable marshland century, the planning and layout of a number of towns time they seem to use up all the possibilities, establishing at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. He and cities reflected a further, although likely unconscious, a dominant style and overwhelming their successors for a engaged Pierre-Charles L’Enfant (1754–1825), an architect and influence of Le Nôtre in America. Detroit, Michigan; India- generation or more. engineer who had served under Washington in the Continen- napolis, Indiana; Madison, Wisconsin; and numerous other André Le Nôtre was certainly such a figure, one of the tal army and whose family had been involved in construction cities were organized according to baroque principles with greatest artists ever to work in the medium of landscape. His at Versailles. To assist in the survey and layout of the capital, multiple focal points linked by broad axes – plans often design ideas and motifs had a pervasive influence on England Jefferson loaned L’Enfant an extensive collection of folios, hidden later beneath subsequent developments. Such patterns for a generation and on Spain, Italy, Prussia, Austria, and maps, and plans of European cities and estates from his own can be found in the layout of many communities across the Russia for more than a century.