Ermenonville Park
The historical landscape park of Ermenonville ( Jardins d'Ermenonville ) was created from 1763 to 1776 by the Marquis René Louis de Girardin . The garden is best known for the poplar island (Île des peupliers) . The original design of the facility is only partially recognizable. The park is located around 50 kilometers northeast of Paris .
history
Girardin inherited the Ermenonville estate in 1762; the castle, built in 1603, and the property were purchased in 1754 by his maternal grandfather, René Hatte. After expansions made through purchases and land swaps in 1762 and 1778, the property comprised an area of around 800 hectares , consisting of meadows, forest and water areas, the castle and the village of Ermenonville . Extensive income from agriculture allowed Girardin to redesign the property according to his ideas. The original park consisted of the north park ( Petit Parc ) , the wilderness and the south park ( Grand Parc ) . Only parts of the landscaping and some of the park architecture are still preserved, the path system no longer exists. The southern area is now called Parc Jean-Jacques-Rousseau , in memory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who died in Ermenonville.
History of ideas background
Ermenonville Park can be seen as a crucial step in introducing the English garden style to the continent. The model for this new type of garden design is found in the landscape park of Stourhead , was begun in the 1741st In contrast to the Baroque garden, it is based on a media concept that aims to realize an ideal landscape as depicted in the paintings by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin ( The Arcadian Shepherds ).
Another idea emerged for the design of the garden in Ermenonville, that of the novel Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse. Lettres de deux amants habitants d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes (" Julie or The New Heloise . Letters from two lovers who live in a small town at the foot of the Alps") by Jean-Jacques Rousseau , published in 1761. Rousseau designs in his book a garden that is exclusively committed to nature, in deliberate contrast to the rationally constructed baroque garden. Consequently, Girardin integrated elements that were supposed to increase the romantic mood (grotto, ruin), which already contradicted Rousseau's idea. Rousseau was aware of the artificiality of the design of the "natural": Even an English-style garden is always a landscape staging. Another exaggeration was the creation of the "Rousseau Island", an island lined with poplars, Île des Peupliers , with a tomb for Rousseau.
Girardin had already made social reform ideas his own and had suggestions for garden design during his stay in Lunéville , the Lorraine exile of the Polish King Stanislaus I. Leszczyński . In England he found a model in the small garden and farm The Leasowes in Halesowen by the poet William Shenstone , which lived up to his high and sometimes rigid moral standards and came close to his ideas of the simplicity of country life. Girardin brought two hundred men from England to the redesign work in Ermenonville and employed a gardener from Scotland.
In addition to the garden design, Girardin's design represented a political symbol against the monarchy, for more civil liberties: freedom and equality as characteristics given to man by nature .
Taking up and imitating the idea
Among other things, through copper engravings by Georges Louis Le Rouge in his work Jardins anglo-chinois à la mode , in which English models are also depicted, the new garden shape became known to aristocratic garden lovers on the continent. One of the most famous imitators was Prince Franz von Anhalt , who had the first large English garden on the continent designed in Wörlitz . Even the Rousseau Island was imitated in Wörlitz and - in ignorance of the sarcophagus in Ermenonville - adorned with a decorative urn. There is also a Rousseau island in the Tiergarten in Berlin and in Arkadia (Poland).
Garden structure and design elements
The landscape of the park consists essentially of two forest areas, in between there are meadows with loose trees and bushes. There is a large and a small pond and a lake-like dammed river. Two parts of the garden were called désert ("wilderness") at the time. The castle ( Château d'Ermenonville ) is located on an island in the Launette river . The concept of the park is characterized by the harmonious connection of different landscape forms, at the same time landscape images were created that encourage lingering and viewing.
The main axis along the Launette valley, visible from the windows of the large living room of the castle, led northwards into the Petit Parc area . The scenery here was designed as a Dutch landscape: the water mill and windmill are assigned to a canal-like watercourse with low bridges, supplemented by a brewery. Today only the canal and the mill exist.
A series of staffage structures that are interspersed in the park landscape are characteristic and programmatically significant. It is a hermitage ( Hermitage ) with a grotto, an artificial ruin ( temple ruiné ) and the house of the philosopher ( maison du philosophe ) . There was also a tower in neo-Gothic style, the Tour Gabrielle , which was given its final shape by Jean-Marie Morel ; it burned out in 1793. The tomb for Jean-Jacques Rousseau was added after his death in 1778. Originally it was an urn on a cube-shaped base, in 1781 the sarcophagus was created according to a design by Hubert Robert , made by the sculptor Jacques Philippe Lesueur . Rousseau's body has not been in Ermenonville since 1794, but in the Panthéon in Paris. On the south bank opposite the island is the grave of Georg Friedrich Meyer (1733–1779), a painter from Strasbourg.
The park was already described in a contemporary garden guide, and the various landscapes were depicted in twenty-five associated copperplate engravings. The text of this book, entitled Promenade ou Itinéraire des jardins d'Ermenonville , is repeatedly incorrectly attributed to Cécile Stanislas Xavier de Girardin , but the author is not yet known. The copper engravings are from Mérigot the Elder. J.
Later development
Ermenonville Park may never have achieved the aesthetic quality of the great English landscaped gardens like Stourhead. Even during the construction phase, there were differences of opinion between Girardin and his architect Jean-Marie Morel , who had violated Girardin's authoritarian manners. A severe storm devastated part of the park in 1787; the damage was not repaired. After the revolution of 1789, the gardens continued to deteriorate. The Girardin couple left the property in 1794.
Subsequent owners did not pursue Girardin's concept any further. For example, rhododendron plantings and other changes were made. The castle and garden remained in the possession of the Girardin family until 1878, and in 1874 they sold the "wilderness". After the Girardins, the property belonged to Constantin Radziwill. Ettore Bugatti acquired the property in 1932, and in 1938 sold the Südpark with the southern lake and the Île des Peupliers to the Touring Club de France . The Oise department has been the owner since 1985. The desert with the Rousseau hut today belongs to the Institut de France and has been neglected. The Château d'Ermenonville is now a privately owned luxury hotel.
literature
- Denis Lambin: Ermenonville today. In: Journal of garden history , Vol. 8, 1988, pp. 42-59 (with bibliography).
- Antoinette Le Normand Romain: The 'ideas' of René de Girardin at Ermenonville. In: The history of garden design. The western tradition from the Renaissance to the present day. Edited by Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot. Thames and Hudson, London 1991, pp. 337-339.
- Michel Conan: René Louis de Girardin. In: Créateurs de jardins et de paysages en France de la Renaissance au XXIe siècle. Edited by Michel Racine. Volume 1. Actes Sud, Arles 2001. ISBN 2-7427-3280-2 ; Pp. 169-178.
- Michael Niedermeier (editor), Michael Seiler (editor): The gardens of Ermenonville . Pückler Society , Berlin 2007 (Announcements from the Pückler Society, New Series; 22; ISSN 1861-8022 ).
Web links
- Side of the Château d'Ermenonville
- Engravings from Promenade ou Itinéraire des jardins d'Ermenonville from 1788
Coordinates: 49 ° 7 ′ 40 ″ N , 2 ° 41 ′ 36 ″ E