Désert de Retz
The Désert de Retz is a historical park in the style of the jardin anglo-chinois near Chambourcy in the French department of Yvelines . It was created at the end of the 18th century by the French nobleman François Nicolas Henri Racine de Monville (1734–1797). By the name Désert (literally “wilderness”) the gardener understood a secluded place of private retreat.
description
The walled park is in the area of the commune of Chambourcy on the border with the Marly forest. It is part of an agricultural estate of forty hectares . The park was originally characterized by 17 (possibly 20) staffage buildings , ten of which still exist. The structures, which can be called follies , refer to ancient models or other, exotic designs. There is an ice cellar in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid, an obelisk and a temple dedicated to the god Pan . There was also a Chinese pavilion , which no longer exists today. The most important building is the former home of Monville, which has the shape of a twenty-five meter high stump of a broken ancient column and is an artificial ruin . It has a diameter of fifteen meters and contained luxuriously furnished living rooms on three floors connected by a spiral staircase .
history
Monville bought a house from Antoine Joseph Basire in 1774 with the surrounding land of 30 hectares . As a result, he enlarged his property to 38 hectares in 1785. The maison chinoise ("Chinese house") built in 1776 served him as a temporary apartment until 1781, the largest building La Colonne ("The Column") was completed. The architect Nicolas François Barbier supported Monville in the planning.
In July 1792 Monville sold the Désert together with his two Paris hotels to the Englishman Lewis Disney Ffytche. He sold the property in 1793. In 1811 Lebigre Beaurepaire bought the park, with which he did not know what to do with, so that Ffytche bought the property back in 1816. His grandson Auguste Guilaume Hilary took possession of it in 1824 and sold it to Alexandre Marie Denis, a notary in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in 1827. He sold it in 1839 to Jean-François Bayard , a nephew of Eugène Scribe by marriage . Bayard's widow left it to Frédéric Passy in 1856 , whose son Pierre set up a chicken farm. In 1936 financial difficulties forced him to sell the estate on which he was born.
The buyer was Georges Courtois, who bought it as an agent for a company called Neueberg. Before work could begin to protect the Désert from imminent destruction, the new owner gave up. The architect Jean-Charles Moreux took care of the deteriorating condition of the buildings. In 1938 and finally in 1941 the Désert was placed under monument protection against the will of the owner company .
The Minister of Culture André Malraux succeeded in persuading the National Assembly to pass a law that created the conditions for saving the Désert . The first securing work was carried out from 1973 to 1979. In 1981 the property became the Societé Civile du Désert de Retz . Part of the property has been used as a golf course since 1991 . A storm in 1999 caused severe damage to the trees. At the end of 2007, the Chambourcy community acquired the approximately 20 hectare property for a symbolic price. The French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, reopened the park at a ceremony on September 24, 2009 . For security reasons, the park can only be visited by appointment.
Buildings
The largest building is the residential building of Monville, La Colonne, designed as a habitable artificial ruin . It has three floors inside and was furnished with valuable furniture. The park was accessed through a collection of artificial rocks that formed a grotto. There was an ice cellar nearby with a pyramid erected over it. There was also the Chinese house built from teak by a pond (destroyed), the temple of Pan, an obelisk, a tomb and an open-air stage with a mur de scène .
The ruins of the Église gothique ("Gothic Church"), a former village church, were apparently originally there and therefore not a garden folly . Functional buildings such as heatable greenhouses and an orangery allowed Monville to cultivate a large number of rare plants, a model farm was intended for agricultural research and a kitchen garden was used for its own supply. The "Tartar tent" was reconstructed in 1989.
Contemporary copper engravings can be found by Georges Louis Le Rouge in his collection Jardins anglo-chinois à la mode (1776–1787) and by Alexandre de Laborde in Nouveaux Jardins de la France (1808). Famous visitors to the park included the Swedish King Gustav III. and the American President Thomas Jefferson .
Garden history classification
The Désert de Retz is one of the most important continental European representatives of the jardin anglo-chinois , a variant of the English landscape garden, which is characterized by dramatic designs (rocks, grottos , waterfalls) and features with idiosyncratic and strange buildings. The underlying romantic landscape concept relies on a melodramatic mood that arouses ideas of a - supposedly - sublime past. The well-furnished house La Colonne allowed the owner of the Désert a comfortable life in the middle of his garden kingdom, which can be understood as a mixture of ideal landscape and place of escape from the world.
Similar gardens are the Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau of the French nobles René de Girardin , who is also a désert has mentioned range, also the Polish Arkadia Princess Helena Radziwiłł and the Wörlitzer Park of Prince Franz von Anhalt . The model for the romantic landscaping with reference to antiquity is the park of Stourhead , arranged by the banker Henry Hoare . The contemporary interest in exotic furnishing elements was promoted by the publications of William Chambers .
The Désert de Retz had long been forgotten. Today the park is the subject of garden historical research. Its restoration was started by Olivier Choppin de Janvry with the Societé Civile du Désert de Retz .
literature
- Le Désert de Retz. Philippe Grunchec, photographies . Editions Gourcuff-Gradenigo, Montreuil 2013. Foreword Jean-Jacques Aillagon , Afterword Julien Cendres , ISBN 978-2-35340-167-3
- Julien Cendres and Chloé Radiguet: Le Désert de Retz, paysage choisi . Préface de François Mitterrand, Editions de l'éclat, Paris 2009.
- Florence Evin: Le désert de Retz retrouve son public. Le jardin anglo-chinois créé aux XVIIIe siècle rouvre avec un ambitieux program de travaux. In: Le Monde, Vol. 65, No. 20115, Sept. 26, 2009, p. 34 Col. 1-4.
- Patrick Goode, Michael Lancaster (Eds.): The Oxford companion to gardens. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-19-860440-8 , pp. 138-139.
- Susan B. Taylor: Désert de Retz . In: Jane Turner (ed.): The dictionary of art , Volume 26. London 1926, pp. 257-258.
Web links
- Désert de Retz (French)
- Parcs à fabriques (French)
- The Désert de Retz - An Extraordinary 18th Century Garden near Paris (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joseph Imorde: Adequate Sensory Spaces in: archimaera (issue 2/2009).
Coordinates: 48 ° 53 '34 " N , 2 ° 0' 56" E