Jean Marie Morel

Jean Marie Morel in a contemporary engraving

Jean Marie Morel (born August 21, 1728 in Lyon , † October 7, 1810 in Écully ) was a French architect , landscape architect and garden theorist. He was also active as a specialist writer and landscape painter. Morel designed around fifty gardens and parks at castles and mansions in the north and east of France for noble clients. Few of his creations have survived unchanged.

Origin and education

Morel was the son of a prosecutor; his mother was of civil origin. Little is known about his childhood; he probably attended a Jesuit college in Lyon. From 1754 to 1758 he worked in the civil engineering department of the Lyon district. He studied from the end of 1758 to 1760 in Paris at the École des Ponts et Chaussées under Jean Rodolphe Perronet , in 1759 he was a student of Jacques François Blondel .

Work as a landscape architect

After the end of the Seven Years War (1763) he served Louis François I de Bourbon (1717–1776) as an architect. Within a few years his jardins pittoresque ("picturesque gardens") style became successful and he received very good pay. After the prince's death, Morel became a sought-after horticultural artist. He received commissions from land nobility in the north and east of France.

His first two designs, which he did not carry out for the Prince of Conti, were the gardens of Guiscard and Ermenonville , the latter for René Louis de Girardin , who himself contributed to the design and which led to a quarrel over the design of the landscape in a picturesque or more "natural" style came.

In 1776 his garden theory work Théorie des jardins ou L'Art des jardins de la nature (“Theory of gardens or the art of gardens according to nature”; Reprint 1973) was published; a second, expanded edition appeared in 1802. Morel referred to the writings of Thomas Whately and Claude-Henri Watelet .

Time after the revolution

Morel lived mostly in Paris, but returned frequently to Lyon. In 1791 he married Adélaïde Goussard de Fontebrune, 23 years his junior, in his hometown . During the clashes of the French Revolution , Morel, like his two brothers, was arrested in Lyon, but was released through the use of his wife.

Morel also continued his work as a landscape architect in post-revolutionary France. Nothing is known about his political point of view; with his landscaped gardens, he was apparently not considered a supporter of the ancien régime . In La Malmaison he designed the large greenhouse ( Grande Serre Chaude ) , which was completed by Jean-Thomas Thibault and Barthélémy Vignon , as well as the châlet suisse (a Swiss-style farmhouse), a shepherd's house, a dairy and a cowshed: this commission for Napoléon and his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais , resulted in numerous follow-up orders.

In the last decade of his life, Morel wrote numerous specialist articles. He died in Écully , a suburb of Lyon , where he owned a house. He was buried (destroyed) in the local cemetery. Morel had two brothers, Bonaventure and Pierre .

Works (selection)

Morel's garden designs were often redesigns of existing palace gardens in the style of picturesque landscape gardens.

• Guiscard (Oise) , for Louis-Marie-Augustin, Duc d'Aumont (1770–1775, today arable land)
• Ermenonville (Oise) , for René Louis de Girardin (1770–1775, only partially preserved)
• Hornoy (Somme) , for Alexandre de Dompierre (around 1780, very well preserved)
• Mauperthuis (Seine-et-Marne) , for Anne-Pierre de Fezensac (1789–1790, partially preserved and modified)
• La Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine) , for Joséphine de Beauharnais (1801–1805, reduced and changed)
• Vizille (Isère) , for Augustin Charles Périer (1808–1810, well preserved)

Most of the preserved gardens are privately owned and not open to the public.

literature

• Morel, Jean Marie . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 25 : Moehring – Olivié . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1931, p. 133 .
• Elisabetta Cereghini : Jean-Marie Morel 1728–1810. In: Créateurs de jardins et de paysages en France de la Renaissance au XXIe siècle . Volume 1. Actes Sud , Arles 2001, ISBN 2-7427-3280-2 , pp. 162-165.
• Joseph Disponzo: Jean-Marie Morel : A catalog of his landscape designs . In: Studies in the history of gardens and designed landscapes . Volume 21, 2001 (double issue 3/4), pp. 149–354.

Web links

• Theory of the jardins ou L'Art des jardins de la nature . Paris 1802. Bavarian State Library, Munich . Online: Volume 1 , Volume 2 .