Essay on Gardens
Essay on Gardens
A Chapter in the French Picturesque
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME
CLAUDE-HENRI WATELET
Edited and Translated by Samuel Danon
Introduction by Joseph Disponzio
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
PENN STUDIES IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
John Dixon Hunt, Series Editor
This series is dedicated to the study and promotion of a wide variety of approaches to landscape architecture, with special emphasis on connections between theory and practice. It includes monographs on key topics in history and theory, descriptions of projects by both established and rising designers, translations of major foreign-language texts, anthologies of theoretical and historical writings on classic issues, and critical writing by members of the profession of landscape architecture.
Copyright © 2003 University of Pennsylvania Press
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University of Pennsylvania Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watelet, Claude-Henri, 1718–1786.
[Essai sur les jardins. English]
Essay on gardens : a chapter in the French picturesque translated into English for the first time / Claude-Henri Watelet; edited and translated by Samuel Danon ; introduction by Joseph Disponzio.
p. cm. — (Penn studies in landscape architecture)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-8122-3722-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Gardens—France—History—18th century. 2. Gardens, French—History—18th century. 3. Picturesque, The. I. Danon, Samuel, 1937–. II. Title. III. Series.
SB466.F8W3813 2003
| 712'.6'094409033—dc21 | 2002040932 |
Frontispiece: Claude-Henri Watelet. Pencil drawing by Charles-Nicolas Cochin. Private collection.
Contents
JOSEPH DISPONZIO
The Embellished Farm
Early Parks
Modern Parks
The Nature of the Terrain
Orientation
Trees
Water
Space
Flowers
Rocks and Grottoes
Garden Styles
The Poetic Style
The Romantic Style
Pleasure Gardens
The Chinese Garden
The French Garden—Letter to a Friend
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
JOSEPH DISPONZIO
Claude-Henri Watelet’s Essai sur les jardins (Essay on Gardens) has long been a staple in the study of the picturesque garden in France. Its brevity belies its impact on the aesthetics of sensibility of the eighteenth century, especially as they directed the conception and development of picturesque gardening in pre-Revolutionary France. Yet, outside the small circle of scholars, it is a work little appreciated and seldom considered.1 Its obscurity has less to do with its artistic merit than with those who have written the history of the French picturesque, as well as the ambivalence the French have had for an art form tainted by a foreign import—the English garden. Fortunately, the history of the French contribution to the development of the jardin anglais (English garden) is in the process of being rewritten, and Watelet’s Essay occupies a central place within it.2
Watelet himself is somewhat better known than his garden essay. Born in Paris on August 28, 1718, he became a fixture in academic, artistic, and philosophes circles. He died in his native city some sixty-eight years later on January 12, 1786, having lived a charmed life of privilege, which if not standard for a man of his station, was enhanced by his innate gifts for aesthetic pleasures. He was born rich, considerably so. His father was a receveur général des finances—somewhat like a regional tax collector—a royal sinecure Watelet inherited, along with his father’s fortune, at age twenty-two. With his livelihood secure, but with no particular penchant or aptitude for finance, Watelet embarked on a life of refined leisure devoted to the beaux arts. As was appropriate for someone of his avocation and wealth, he took young artists under his wing, frequented and supported the intellectual and artistic salon culture of the day, and was a host of considerable charm and generosity. His friends and acquaintances, drawn from the upper levels of pre-Revolutionary Parisian society, included both artists and arbiters of taste, among them François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny, and Anne-Claude-Philippe, comte de Caylus.
Although a bachelor, he lived intimately with his mistress, Marguerite Le Comte, a woman of considerable artistic accomplishment in her own right. Having a mistress during the Old Regime was common practice, but Watelet’s ménage was, if not singular, at least special. For the forty or so years that they were together, most of which was lived under the same roof, they shared company with Mme Le Comte’s husband, Jacques-Roger Le Comte. Presumably, Watelet was devoted to his mistress and treated her husband impeccably, for by all contemporary accounts, they lived in respectful, if not peaceful, conjugality, one degree—or bed—removed. All three profited from the situation: the lovers with each other, the husband enjoying companionship without connubial responsibility. They even traveled together, most notably on a celebrated trip to Italy in 1763–1764, culminating in a lavish party given in their honor by the French Academy in Rome. The visit was immortalized in an elegant suite of engravings produced by students of the Academy, set to a poem by Louis Subleyras and drawings by, among others, Hubert Robert.3 In illustration and verse, the visit is recounted through allegory and classical imagery, including a flattering apotheosis of Mme Le Comte being crowned by Apollo, Watelet at her side.