Achille Duchêne

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Achille Duchêne (born November 1, 1866 , † 1947 ) was a French landscape architect . At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, his office was an international leader in the design of neo-baroque French gardens and is still considered the most important landscape architect of the neo-baroque era. His great reputation earned him the nickname "Napoleon of the Gardens" ( French Napoléon des jardins ). As a pioneer of historicism in gardening , his reconstructions of historical gardens also paved the way for the preservation of garden monuments in Europe.

life and work

Achille Duchêne was born to the garden architect Henri Duchêne . He and his horticultural company had specialized in the design of architectural gardens for a well-off clientele since the early 1880s. At the age of twelve Achille supported his father in his work, which was particularly popular with the nobility with his castles and country houses. Through years of collaboration with his father, Achille Duchêne's work was strongly influenced by him. The son developed and refined the father's style. It enjoyed increasing popularity, so that Achille Duchêne finally received not only orders from all over Europe, but also from the USA, Argentina and Morocco. His clients included the Austrian Embassy in Paris, the Marquis and Marquise de Ganay, the Duke of Arenberg and the Duke of Marlborough . After the First World War and the Great Depression Duchênes aristocratic clientele was not as financially strong. As the orders from this clientele were decreasing, he also designed public parks , which, however, received far less attention than his neo-baroque gardens.

Achille Duchêne was more inspired by architecture and spatial art than by horticulture for his formal gardens . For him, nothing beats the classic French baroque garden with strict lines and hierarchical arrangements. He often condemned English landscape gardens as tasteless and superfluous. Duchêne was one of the few horticultural artists who pursued the preservation and restoration of historical gardens as early as the 19th century, but for a reconstruction, attention to detail was not the top priority, but rather an idealized system, which he would appear even more "authentic" through changes wanted to leave. His designs were characterized by subtle and monochrome designs; he avoided lush and colorful flower arrangements where possible. Box trees and yews were mostly used for parterres . Duchêne celebrated successes not only with his reconstructions such as the ground floor of Vaux-le-Vicomte , but also with completely new systems. For example, between 1903 and 1915 he designed the new garden of the completely modified Voisins Castle for Count Edmont de Fels and his wife , which has been preserved to this day - in some cases somewhat simplified. Both reconstruction and new installation can be found in Duchêne's work on Nordkirchen Castle . While he maintained the structure of the local West garden and only its equipment changed something called was Venus island a new creation in the style of neo-baroque. It was restored from 1989 to 1991 according to the original plans.

  • Examples of Duchêne gardens

  • Formal garden of Blenheim Palace

  • Venus Island from Nordkirchen Castle

  • Garden ground floor of Vaux-le-Vicomte

The approximately 300 gardens designed by Duchêne include the following:

Achille Duchêne published numerous publications, including the book Les jardins de l'avenir - hier, aujourd'hui, demain . He was also the editor of the Gazette Illustrée des amateurs de jardins and, together with Ferdinand Duprat, chaired the Société française des architectes de jardins ( German  society of garden architects in France ). The Société Nationale d'Horticulture ( German  National Horticultural Society of France ) appointed him its honorary president.

literature

  • Beate Böckenhoff: Achille Duchêne (1866–1947). Pioneer of historicism in France . In: Stadt + Grün. The garden authority . No. 12, 2002, ISSN  0948-9770 , pp. 38-43 ( PDF ; 7 MB).
  • Claire Frange (Ed.): Le style Duchene. Henri & Achille Duchene, architectes paysagistes, 1841-1947 . Editions du Labyrinthe, Neuilly 1998, ISBN 2-913440-00-2 .
  • Dorothée Imbert: Henri Duchêne, Achille Duchêne. A return to formalism . In: Dorothee Imbert (Ed.): The modernist garden in France . Yale University Press 1993, ISBN 0300047169 , pp. 1-10 ( excerpts online ).
  • Jean-Christophe Molinier: L'art des jardins selon Achille Duchêne. In: Sites et Monuments . No. 121, April-June 1988, ISSN  0489-0280 , pp. 27-30 ( digitized ).
  • Monique Mosser: Henri and Achille Duchêne. The new discoverers Le Nôtres . In: Monique Mosser, Georges Teyssot (ed.): The garden art of the west . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3421030081 , pp. 442-446.
  • Patrice Notteghem, Bernard Clément: Les Jardins des Duchêne en Europe . Spiralinthe, [Neuilly] 2000, ISBN 2-913440-06-1 .

Web links

Commons : Achille Duchêne  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b B. Böckenhoff: Achille Duchêne (1866-1947) , 2002, p. 38.
  2. ↑ Gerd Dethlefs (ed.): Nordkirchen Castle . Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-422-02304-8 , p. 8.
  3. ↑ a b B. Böckenhoff: Achille Duchêne (1866–1947) , 2002, p. 42.
  4. ↑ B. Böckenhoff: Achille Duchêne (1866–1947) , 2002, p. 43.
  5. ↑ a b B. Böckenhoff: Achille Duchêne (1866–1947) , 2002, p. 39.
  6. ↑ B. Böckenhoff: Achille Duchêne (1866-1947) , 2002, p. 40.
personal data
SURNAME Duchêne, Achille
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French landscape architect
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1866
DATE OF DEATH 1947