Louis Carmontelle

Louis Carmontelle , actually Louis Carrogis (born August 15, 1717 in Paris , † December 26, 1806 there) was a French painter , inventor and landscape designer . He was in the service of the Dukes of Orléans, for whom he organized festivals and created the Folie de Chartres (remaining area today Parc Monceau ).

Origin and education

Carmontelle was the son of a shoemaker . Nothing is known about his school days and little is known about his early years. He learned the art of drawing and acquired knowledge of geometry , and around 1741 he became an engineer . In 1754 he was in the service of the Dukes of Chevreuse and Luycens. In 1758 he worked as a surveyor in the Orléans dragoon regiment , then as a tutor for nobles. He drew attention to himself with his first portrait drawings ; Nothing is known about his artistic training; Carmontelle was probably self-taught .

Time under Louis-Philippe (I.) d'Orléans

After the Peace of Amiens in 1763, Carmontelle managed to gain access to the family circle of the Duke of Orléans . He became the organizer of ducal festivals, theatrical performances and similar events. His ideas and artistic talent secured the “all-rounder” Carmontelle his social position. He portrayed numerous people and guests in the ducal surroundings on a large scale ( pen and watercolor ), and he worked very quickly.

Carmontelle hands over the keys to the Monceau Park to Louis-Philippe II

Time under "Philippe Égalité", Louis-Philippe II.

As early as 1773 Carmontelle had received the order from the Duke's son, later " Philippe Égalité ", to enlarge and decorate the garden of a ducal estate on a plot of land in the north-west of Paris. Until 1778 Carmontelle created the foliage de Chartres , a picturesque “landscape of illusions” (pays d'illusions) with numerous staffage structures and exoticisms , a “ folly garden ” designed in the contemporary modern English garden style . Even after the Duke's death in 1785, he continued to work for his son.

Carmontelle was also active as a landscape painter. One of his inventions were scrolls, which were about 50 centimeters high and up to several tens of meters in length. They were with rubber colors on China paper as Transparent executed and could be demonstrated by means of a manufactured by Carmontelle box in front of a light source. The strip of images, which was on two rollers and moved by a crank, represented fictional landscapes that showed realistic garden scenes at the time. Carmontelle was the inventor of an early animation of images.

After the death of Louis Philippe II under the guillotine (1793), Carmontelle lived in seclusion in an apartment on Rue Vivienne (Paris), where he died thirteen years later. Carmontelle was an artist of the ancien régime , to whom he owed his rise and success; only in his anonymous writings did he take a critical stand.

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Scroll painting by Louis Carmontelle

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Carmontelle's graphic work is extensive. Over 600 portraits of contemporary personalities of great documentary value have been preserved. Carmontelle provided the template for the engraving La malheureuse Famille Calas (on the Jean Calas judicial scandal ) by Jean-Baptiste Delafosse , as well as landscapes and scrolls. In terms of landscape design, the Monceau Park was his main work, but only a few of the horticultural structures are still there, such as the Naumachie .

Carmontelle's transparent scroll paintings are only partially preserved:

• Musée Condé , Chantilly: no name, 48.5 × 12600 cm (beginning slightly shortened)
• Private ownership: no description, 42 × 2000 cm
• Musée de l'Île-de-France , Sceaux: The Seasons (1798), 41 × 4200 cm
• J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles: no description, 47 × 377 cm (incomplete)
• Rachel Lambert Mellon Collection , Upperville: no description (around 1800–1804), 48 × 2135 cm
• Private ownership: single sheets of four other banners

Publications

Carmontelle was also active as a writer . His proverbes were small pieces for entertainment at court parties with a moral punch . Carmontelle's novels were unsuccessful. His art reviews appeared anonymously and are merely attributed to him.

• Proverbes dramatiques , entertainment piece (1768)
• Amusements de société , entertainment piece (1769)
• Le triomphe de l'amour sur les mœurs de ce siècle , novel (1773)
• Théâtre de campagne , entertainment play (1775)
• Le duc d'Arnay , Roman (1776)
• L'abbé de plâtre , Comedy (performed 1779)
• Le coup de patte , criticism, attributed (1779)
• Jardins de Monceau , description of the garden (1779)
• Le triumvirat des arts , criticism, attributed (1783)
• Les femmes , Dialogue novel (1825)

literature

• ML Blumer: Carmontelle. In: Dictionnaire de biographie française , ed. by M. Prevost and Roman d'Amat. Volume 7. Letouzey et Ané, Paris 1956, columns 1170-1171.
• Richard John: Louis de Carmontelle. In: The dictionary of art, ed. by Jane Turner. Volume 5. Macmillan, London 1996, ISBN 1-884446-00-0 , pp. 779-780.
• Joachim Rees : Carmontelle. In: General Artist Lexicon . Volume 16. Saur, Munich and Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-598-22756-6 , p. 480.
• Monique Mosser: Louis Carmontelle . 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. 150-153.
• Laurence Chatel de Brancion: Carmontelle's landscape transparencies. Cinema of the Enlightenment. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2008, ISBN 978-0-89236-909-6 .

Web links

Commons : Louis Carmontelle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files