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From Garden to Landscape: Jean-Marie Morel and the Transformation of Garden Design Author(s): Joseph Disponzio Source: AA Files, No. 44 (Autumn 2001), pp. 6-20 Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29544230 Accessed: 25-08-2014 19:53 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Architectural Association School of Architecture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to AA Files. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 25 Aug 2014 19:53:16 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions From to Garden Landscape Jean-Marie Morel and the Transformation of Garden Design JosephDisponzio When the French landscape designer Jean-Marie Morel died on claim to the new style. Franc, ois de Paule Latapie, a protege of 7 October, 1810, the Journal de Lyon et du Departement du Rhone Montesquieu, was first to raise the issue in his translation of gave his obituary pride of place on the front page of its Thomas Whately's Observations onModern Gardening (1770), the ii October issue. It began simply: 'Jean-Marie Morel, architecte first theoretical text on picturesque gardening. Latapie trans? a on paysagiste'. Less than week later, 16 October, the Gazette lated the English 'gardener' as jardinier', adding an explanatory ou Nationale Le Moniteur Universel, made his death national news. note that 'createur des jardins' might better connote the English Repeating the Lyons notice, theMoniteur, too, described Morel original, because 'le mot de jardinier est loin de repondre ? as an architecte-paysagiste. The Academie of Lyons, likewise, l'homme rare, que M. Whateley (sic) nous a depeint dans son announced the passing of their esteemed colleague, 'Morel, introduction, sous le nom de Gardener'.5 Watelet, in his Essai architecte-paysagiste'.1He was again called an architecte-paysagiste sur lesJardins (1774) vacillated between artiste and decorateur des in a biographical notice published late in 1810,2 and some 15 jardins. Similarly, the due d'Harcourt's Traite de la decoration des was years after his death he still being referred to in thisway.3 dehors, des jardins et des pares implied that the garden designer use The repeated of architecte-paysagiste to qualify Morel's was a decorateur.6Duschesne used formateur with some regularity name some as needs explanation, the term had little, if any, in his Sur laformation des jardins of 1775. Girardin was partial to currency at the time of his death. It first appeared in the artistewhen he needed a simple noun, but pointedly noted in his m Almanack de la Ville de Lyon, for 1803-4, which Morel was treatise, De la compositiondes paysages (1777), cCe n'est done ni en en listed: 'M. Morel, architecte-paysagiste du Premier consul'. The Architecte, ni Jardinier, e'est en Poete et en Peintre qu'il faut Almanack had him as et des previous year's listed 'architecte composer paysages...'7 paysagiste' [emphasis added]. There ismuch reason to believe In common with his contemporaries, Morel used jardinier, thatMorel, and not the editors of the Almanack, removed the but qualifies his usage in his book Theorie des jardins of 1776: 'Par a conjunction and replaced itwith hyphen.4 All this is impor? Jardinier, j'entends l'Artiste de go?t qui compose lesJardins, & tant because itmarks the earliest determined appearance of a non celui qui les cultive'.8 Although he was uncomfortable with term that is still used in French to designate the landscape the word, he used it, along with artistejardinier, or simply artiste, professional. interchangeably throughout his book. He was not satisfied, At the time ofMorel's death the type of garden he professed, however. Some 26 years later he revisits the issue in his second the natural or picturesque style, was well established. Yet edition of 1802. With renewed concern, he reiterates that neither the terminology for the designer of such gardens, or the neither the garden designer, nor the garden type itselfhas been over nomen? product itself, had been codified. The debate satisfactorily designated: 'ni ses productions, ni l'artiste qui le some clature had been brewing for time. Virtually all the professe, n'ont pas encore obtenu dans notre langue un nom French picturesque garden theorists of the late eighteenth qui les distingu?t du legumier et de celui qui cultive'.9 Morel's century, including Claude Henri Watelet, Nicolas Duschesne, pique suggests his impatience with the lack of consensus in Rene de Girardin, Francois-Henri, due de Harcourt and Morel garden terminology, and his growing awareness that the new himself, used different terms to designate the new garden style had acquired an individual status requiring codification. designer. Their common ground was to deny the architecteany The debate over nomenclature is a crucial indicator of the 6 AA FILES This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 25 Aug 2014 19:53:16 UTC 44 All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I. Jean-Marie Morel. Anonymous portrait, c.1810. Bibliotheque municipal de Lyon. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 25 Aug 2014 19:53:16 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions at His awareness that garden theorists had of the changing status of until just weeks before his death the age of 82. gardens - a on name a in the the garden. There may not have been consensus the covered large portion of France from Picardie, north, - or was to most were in an arc between of the new gardening its practitioner, but there the Alps but concentrated more agreement that it was different. By virtue of his theoretical Paris, Dijon and Lyons. Among his prominent pre were the duchesse writings and the evidence of his practice, Morel was perhaps Revolutionary clients the due d'Aumont, comtesse the most convincing advocate for the transformation of d'Enville, the comtesse de Pons-Saint-Maurice, and the de gardening into a new design idiom. Having named the Brionne, the marquis de Montesquiou marquis a new course the saw some of practitioner, the architecte-paysagiste,he charted for Girardin. Beyond Ile-de-France, Burgundy most and an incipient discipline that eventually gave rise to the profession Morel's important works. Chartraire de Montigny were of landscape architecture. Antoine-Louis Verchere d'Arcelot, both of Dijon, among on a was a of and a Jean-Marie Morel was born inLyons 21August 1728 into his noteworthy clients. Chartraire mayor Dijon a man For him Morel well-to-do Lyonnaise family.10His father was of the law; member of the Burgundian parliament. designed seat. his mother of the bourgeois merchant class. Litde is known of his gardens in Paris, Dijon and Bierre-les-Semur, his country owner was also a early education, but he probably attended one of the two Jesuit The garden for chateau d'Arcelot, whose east of colleges of Lyons: the Grand College de la Trinke or the College member of the parliament of Burgundy, lies just Dijon as a mature In Notre-Dame. He acquired a knowledge of mathematics solid and survives remarkable example ofMorel's style. to enough to allow for his entry into the corps of the Ponts et the years leading theRevolution and its immediate aftermath, most Chaussees for the generalite of Lyons in 1754,where he remained Morel's projects in Burgundy occupied of his working life, a in the until his enrolment inJean-Rodolphe Perronet's Ecole des Ponts although he maintained busy schedule of garden design as a et Chaussees inNovember 1758. In Paris he also studied with the Ile-de-France well. Indeed, for all but critical four-month to worked the preeminent teacher of architecture of the day, Jacques-Francois period in 1793-4, Morel appears have throughout Blondel, for at least a year. Throughout his tenure with the Ecole tumultuous years bracketing theRevolution.14 was career was an to he was ranked an ingenieur-geographe,but his education cut His invigorated in late 1801 with invitation at his short by a financial crisis in 1760, resulting in his dismissal.11 work at Malmaison the behest of Josephine. Once again a an a rash of Shortly after the Seven Years War (1757-63) Morel secured employ for such illustrious client spurred post in the court of a prince of the blood, Louis-Francois de commissions for the social and political circle of Napoleon, Bourbon, prince de Conti (1717-76), rising to bureau chief of the including Josephine's daughter Hortense, and her husband, the de the prince's b?timents et travaux. Conti had vast land holdings Napoleon's brother Louis Napoleon, due Trevise, were Roch throughout France, but his principal residences his due de Marmier and the tresorier-general, Martin ch?tellenie of l'lsle-Adam and his Paris seat at the Enclos du Xavier, comte Esteve, whose estate at Heudicourt (Eure) to an Temple. With his favourite, Marie-Charlotte de Saujon, remains. In the years leading his death he kept exhausting Madame de Bouffiers (1725-1800), Conti presided over his court, schedule, shuttling between Lyons, Dijon and Paris, initiating new while surrounding himself with an Enlightenment crowd that included projects, maintaining ties with ongoing ones, all the - a among others Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, Turgot and Beau? keeping high profile in Lyons's learned institutions the marchais.

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