Claude-Henri Watelet

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Claude-Henri Watelet by Jean-Baptiste Greuze , approx. 1763–1765

Claude-Henri Watelet (born August 28, 1718 in Paris ; † January 12, 1786 ibid) was a wealthy French Fermier Général , graphic artist, art collector, encyclopaedist , author and horticultural enthusiast .

Live and act

Watelet was born in Paris on rue Montorgueil as the son of Nicolas Robert Watelet (1682-1740) and his wife Nicole Elisabeth de Beaufor (1697-1725). The couple had two other sons, Gaspard Henri Watelet (1717-1721) and Jean Nicolas Watelet de Valogny (1723-1775).

His family originally came from the Ardennes . His father was also a fermier général . Watelet attended the Collège d'Harcourt . A trip to Italy followed at the age of nineteen. There in Rome he attended the Académie de France à Rome and made his first sketches and made friends with Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714–1789). Back in France, he was given the administrative function of general tax collector for the Orléans district, receveur général des finances de la généralité d'Orléans . This position earned him a good income and allowed him to indulge his passion for the arts. So he learned to draw, various forms of etching , especially etching , painting, embossing , etc. a. m. From 1747 he was an honorary associé libre member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture . His art trips took him not only to Italy, but also to Holland.

He was acquainted with M me de Pompadour and attended the salons of M me de Tencin and M mm Geoffrin .

His friends included Jean-François Marmontel , Jacques Delille and Salomon Gessner . He also wrote various articles in the Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert . Mainly there were articles about drawing, painting and printmaking.

"Cour et cuisines du Moulin Joly" Pen drawing, Indian ink and watercolor by Watelet

But he also wrote plays, but only two of them were performed. In 1760 he created an didactic poem, L'Art de peindre, which gave rise to the choice of the Académie française . He took over the seat of Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud on November 29, 1760. In 1764 he was accepted into the Florentine Accademia della Crusca and as a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

In his Essai sur les Jardins (1774) Watelet also processed the ideas of the physiocrats and created a bucolic vision of France that could return to production through simple agriculture on the basis of an idealized, family-owned farm. He also declared a clear affection for the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, quite in his diction, he thought that the man in the garden would lose the fetters that would make him a slave to his business. But the influences of Thomas Whately and William Chambers can also be proven. In his published Essai sur le jardins , he named three characteristics on which every garden should be based: the picturesque, the poetic and the romantic. The gardener will create paths that wind back and forth, he will leave space between the garden and the viewer or he will deliberately bring both of them closer together, depending on the intent of his design. He will also ensure that the viewer finds peace and relaxation where his work shows its most beautiful, picturesque side.

The Essai sur les jardins are one of his main works and describe the Moulin Joly garden . Watelet acquired this complex on the banks of the Seine between Colombes and Argenteuil in 1750 and converted the gardens according to his ideas between 1754 and 1772. It consisted of three islands, with a rustic house, a grotto, shelters for animals, a Chinese bridge, a Dutch bridge, a floating bridge as well as a water mill , a dairy and a garden which was supposed to preserve the natural beauty. Such a garden concept should also contain stables, granaries, dairies and apiaries and bring the benefits of nature to fruition, filled with effortless satisfaction. Nevertheless, for Watelet, on the other hand, imitating nature always meant subjecting it to art. It was one of the first "picturesque gardens" and was influenced by the Chinoiserie but also by Anglo-Saxon horticultural styles . His artist friends François Boucher and Hubert Robert were regular guests there.

A few years later, in February 1746, Watelet entered into an intimate relationship with Marguerite Le Comte (1717–1800), a young married woman. Her husband, with whom she was married since September 9, 1735, was the public prosecutor, procureur du Grand Châtelet Jacques Roger Lecomte (1702–1789). Between 1763 and 1786 he spent a second time in Italy with his lover, where they lived in the Villa Medici in Rome .

Works (selection)

About the arts

  • Encyclopédie , "Gravure", vol. 7 (1757)
  • Contributions to Vies des premiers peintres du roi, depuis M. Le Brun jusqu'à présent (1752).
  • L'Art de peindre, poème, avec des réflexions sur les différentes parties de la peinture (1760). ( online )
  • Essai sur les jardins (1774). RRprinted (Gérard Monfort), 2004. ( online )
  • Dictionnaire des beaux-arts (2 volumes, 1788–1791). Watelet's work was designed by Pierre-Charles Lévesque a. a. completes online and online . Facsimile Edition: LF Prault, Paris / Minkoff, Genève, 1972.
  • Rymbranesques ou Essais de gravures (1783).
Front sheet of L'Art de peindre, poème, avec des réflexions sur les différentes parties de la peinture (1760)

theatre

  • La Maison de campagne à la mode, ou La comédie d'après nature, comédie en deux actes, en prose, composée en 1777 (1784) ( online )
  • Recueil de quelques ouvrages de M. Watelet, de l'Académie françoise et de celle de peinture (1784).
    • Silvie
    • Zénéïde, en 1 acte, en prose, composée en janvier 1743
    • Les Statuaires d'Athènes, comédie en 3 actes en prose, composée en 1766 ** Les Veuves, ou la Matrône d'Éphèse, comédie en 3 actes, en vers
    • Milon, intermède pastoral en 1 acte en vers
    • Deucalion et Pyrrha, opéra à grand spectacle, en 4 actes en vers, composé en 1765, exécuté au concert des écoles gratuites de dessin, le 29 avril 1772, dans la salle du Wauxhall de la foire St-Germain . ( online ).
    • Délie, drame lyrique en 1 acte en vers, composé en 1765
    • Phaon, drame lyrique en 2 actes en vers mêlé d'ariettes, représenté devant Leurs Majestés à Choisy en septembre 1778 .

literature

  • Maurice Henriet: Un amateur d'art au xvme siècle: l'académicien Watelet. Gazette des beaux-arts, 64, juillet-décembre 1922, pp. 173–194.
  • William Thomas Hendel: Illusions of the Artless: Spectacles of Nature in Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Claude-Henri Watelet. University of California, Los Angeles, 2007

Web links

Wikisource: Claude-Henri Watelet  - Sources and full texts (French)
Commons : Claude-Henri Watelet  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Family data
  2. ↑ Ulrich Thieme; Felix Becker: General Lexicon of the Visual Artists. Leipzig 1907–1950, p. 510
  3. ↑ Frank A. Kafker: Notices sur les auteurs of 17 volumes de "discours" de l'Encyclopédie (suite et fin) . Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie Année 1990, Volume 8 Numéro 8 p. 120
  4. ↑ Félix Vicq d'Azyr , Éloge de M. Watelet, lu à la séance publique de la Société royale de médecine du 29 août 1786 by M. Vicq-d'Azyr, secrétaire perpétuel de cette société . Represented in the Avertissement of the Dictionnaire des beaux-arts , Volume 1, 1788.
  5. ^ Membership list of the Crusca
  6. ^ Members of the previous academies. Claude-Henri Watelet. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on June 26, 2015 .
  7. ^ Hanno-Walter Kruft: History of Architectural Theory. Princeton Architectural Press 1996 ISBN 1-56898-010-8 , p. 264
  8. ↑ Parcs majeurs disparus. Le Moulin-Joly à Colombes historique description d'époque. In French with illustrations, online
  9. ↑ Christine Dessemme; Cecile Maincion; Isabelle Leunuque (Ed.): Moulin Joly, un jardin enchanté au siècle des Lumières. Catalog de l'exposition conçue par Editeur: Ville de Colombes 2006
  10. ^ Yves-Marie Allain; Janine Christiany: L'art des Jardins en Europe. Citadelles & Mazenod, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-85088-087-6 , p. 316 ff
personal data
SURNAME Watelet, Claude-Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author and encyclopedist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1718
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1786
Place of death Paris