Essay on Gardens

A Chapter in the French Picturesque

Claude-Henri Watelet, Samuel Danon

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780812237221, 9780812237221
• eBook ISBN: 9780812204131
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Published in 1774, Essay on Gardens is one of the earliest texts showing the progressive shift in French taste from the classical model of the gardens at Versailles to the picturesque or natural style of garden design in the late eighteenth century. In this formulation of his ideas concerning landscape, Claude-Henri Watelet describes an ideal farm and also his own very real garden, Moulin Joli, near Paris. He advances the theory that the useful and the pleasurable must be combined in the planning, preservation, and decoration of the land by offering a relatively novel design that uses experimental methods to create a comfortable estate. The result is a horticultural and ecological laboratory that includes a residence, a farm, stables, a dairy, an apiary, a mill, walks, vistas, flower beds, an area reserved for medicinal plants, decorative statues, a medical laboratory, and even a small infirmary for ailing members of the community.Given the wide scholarly interest in the field of garden design and its history, this first English edition of Watelet's small but influential book will interest historians of landscape design as well as students of the history of architecture. Joseph Disponzio's informative introduction to Samuel Danon's masterful translation situates the Essay on Gardens within the framework of other landscape and garden treatises of the late eighteenth century.Although the original text was not illustrated, this edition includes a selection of charming drawings and etchings of Moulin Joli by Watelet himself, Hubert Robert, and others.

Essay on Gardens

Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis.

(But happy, too, is he who knows the rural gods.)

Virgil, Georgics, book 2, line 493

Foreword

Society today shows greater interest than ever before in the intelligent enjoyment of the agreeable arts.¹ This leads them to multiply and divide into an infinity of branches, and to show steady advancement. As a result, the “mechanical”² aspect of these arts has progressed almost as much as it can, driven by wealth, imitation, and industry. We now seem to require, however, that the “liberal” side also contribute to the agreeable arts all the attention they deserve. In other words, we wish not only that both the materials of artistic creations and their uses bring pleasure to the senses, but also that the mind and the soul in turn be touched and stirred by their appeal. That is the natural progress followed by an alert mind when its desires are stimulated, and also by the soul which, if active, strives to grow and flourish.

I shall not on this occasion examine such questions as whether this general activity, greater in our country than it would be in societies less populous and less filled with idle men, is more harmful to our national glory than it is beneficial; nor shall I attempt to determine whether these branches of secondary arts, which we are so eager to multiply by grafting them, so to speak, onto one another, rob the more fundamental arts of part of their substance. Such general questions are surely interesting, but this is perhaps not the right moment to discuss them, and we should appear quite harsh if we resolved them at this time to the detriment of a great number of people among us who are almost exclusively concerned with their personal satisfaction.

I am more indulgent than that and only wish at this time to pass along a few observations I made while I was landscaping my garden, in order to assist those who find pleasure in embellishing theirs.³ If these remarks turn out not to be disappointing, they will perhaps be followed by a more extensive collection that will consider the different arts in relation to one another from simple and elementary points of view. But in order to please some friends who are interested in the subject, I first offer this essay on gardens.⁴

In ancient times garlands were offered to benevolent divinities. This small book, in which flowers abound, is a garland I present to friendship.

To you, my friends, whom friendship guides and attracts to this pleasant retreat⁵ where together we may taste those pleasures so dear to gentle and sensitive souls; to you, who come here occasionally to find the solitary peace so favorable to literature and the arts, the consolation of wise men; and, finally, to you, who, although born in palaces where hereditary virtues are preserved, do not disdain the huts where such virtues are honored, it is to you that I present this tribute. The offering is quite small, but the simple and true feeling that accompanies it may at least prove worthy of you.

On Gardens

If, under the influence of their passions, men forsake the gentle pleasures of a tranquil existence, they also come to yearn, through an irresistible urge, for the peace and quiet that they have sacrificed. A need often awakens in their troubled souls to escape the painful commotion that increasingly marks all societies. Especially when the season of nature’s renewal returns, everything urges them to enjoy the gifts they are offered. That is when, lured outside the walls that enclose them, they scatter like escaped prisoners into wide and airy spaces. They can be seen wandering outside cities or climbing hillsides in search of air purer than they have breathed until now. Those most oppressed by their labors, those most chained to the yoke of their passions, rid themselves of their fetters or, if they are too weak and the effort is too great, drag their tether behind them while briefly forgetting its weight. Thus they obey nature’s command, for she smiles at them encouragingly and says:

“Come! Escape the turmoil that exhausts you; escape those impulsive passions that tire your soul, the whirlwind whose thick vapors wear you down. Come, come and breathe, come and receive the warm caress of that lovely star that restores your right to equality, since it casts its light and warmth not only on the powerful and rich, but on the weak and poor as well. Listen to my voice: Build yourselves retreats where, surrounded by your children, your wives, and some true friends, you may taste, at least for a while, the pleasures that I have in store for you.”

At the call of that soothing and persuasive voice, most city dwellers run off to find delight in the calm of the countryside. They build houses, endeavor to make them enjoyable, and seek peaceful tasks and pleasures in the care they bestow on them. Although their desires are still vague and their ideas unclear, their need for such pleasures is genuine. And since there is no man who has not entertained some fantasy stemming from his desires, there is no one, especially in the spring, who has not conceived the project of a country retreat. It is one of those “novels” every man composes for himself, just like the “novel” of his loves, his ambitions, or his fortune.

One should, no doubt, expect to find in these creative endeavors the same diversity that nature bestows on the individuals who undertake them. But while nature is careful to make each person different, the irresistible urge to imitate makes men resemble one another when they live side by side.

Imitation, subjecting everything to its power, imposes laws on trees, flowers, water, greenery. Most of the designs of our gardens, the shapes of our flower beds, the layouts of our groves, the ornaments we use, are borrowed or copied from one another.

There are, however, certain basic relations that exist between all these manifestations and man’s needs, abilities, and inclinations. And there are also those that arise from the progress of knowledge and from the influence the various arts exert on one another.

In order to explain these relations, I shall distinguish between utilitarian establishments and pleasure gardens.

As for city gardens, their layouts seem to me to belong more particularly to architecture than to the other arts. Indeed, public walks, even most of those that belong to royal households or to our princes and are accessible to everyone, must be regarded as places where people meet or congregate. Simplicity and symmetry suit them well, for in our country, order and custom demand that everything in them be readily accessible to the eye.

Utilitarian Establishments

Rural establishments, those that conform to the original intentions of nature, are also the oldest and the least susceptible to the inevitable changes that take place within societies.

People who live in the midst of fields either resist the whims of fashion or are ignorant of them. Changes in mores and the weight of public opinion have greater difficulty reaching them; the arts and social customs are slower to exert their influence. The purpose of such establishments is usefulness, often limited to strict necessity. Considered from this point of view, they would seem to be related only to the mechanical arts, but there is always a subtle element of pleasure that enters into the utilitarian, because relaxation is as indispensable to man as work, and pleasure is one of his needs.

It is in this respect that my subject is related to the liberal arts. But let us examine for a moment the process that leads to this affinity.

When industry or power have produced in societies inequalities in skills and resources, then disparities arise in the ownership of the countryside, which should belong to everyone. Powerful and rich lords, who own large portions of the common heritage, derive a double advantage from their possessions: luxury and leisure. Yet while profiting from these benefits, they do not completely abandon the impulses that had produced them; indeed, those impulses fill their leisure time. Thus hunting sometimes appeals to belligerent peoples who, in times of peace, find it an enjoyable substitute for war. But aggressive activities do not lead to the transformation of wilderness into farmland or of the countryside into gardens. Such interests are primarily reserved for the farmers who cultivate the land. Open to new ideas, engaged by their work, prompted by their very activities toward the need for relaxation, everything draws them to the pleasures of repose, to the charms of idle enjoyments, and finally to more refined gratifications.

We shall see how, in large and flourishing societies, imitation and vanity are added to these impulses. But let us pursue our argument.

Having become less active because need—both useful and dire to men—no longer determines their behavior, landowners who enjoy in peace both luxury and leisure bring closer to their homes what they had earlier sought far away. Forest shade seems now too distant, and water flowing in out-of-the-way caves is now too hard to draw at its source; in other words, they require that the ready availability of goods obviate need, and the immediacy of gratification anticipate desire.

And so, frustrated in his idleness, man demands that surrounding objects stir feelings in him too often absent from his empty and weary soul. And as his soul has become difficult to please in the choice of sensations, like a sick person in the choice of foods offered him, he carries his desires to the level of sensual experience, whose delicacy requires the most perfect balance of external objects, the senses, and state of mind.

In order to attain such a refined degree of pleasure, man makes subtle distinctions in the embellishment of those sites he enjoys visiting. He prepares comfortable resting places and seeks out attractive views. He demands an ever thicker shade from the foliage of trees intertwined and transformed into bowers, while he requires that apart from their usefulness these trees be also prized for their shapes, their selection, and their variety. Wishing to be constantly enthralled, he gathers in a single place the flowers that had captured his attention in the fields and meadows where nature sows them at random. Moreover, he devises new ways of endowing them with perfections that nature had apparently denied them. Then, attentive to the sweet emotions of love, filial tenderness, and friendship, man discovers in these feelings even greater charms. He abandons himself to them in solitary places where his sensibilities are intensified by the happiness of birds; where the rhythmic sound of cascading, rolling water prolongs a pleasing reverie; where greenery and rare, many-colored flowers invite the eye to linger, thus delighting both sight and smell without bringing too much discomfort to the soul.

These are the steps by which art succeeds at last in embellishing nature.

But the idle, ingenious, sensitive man, after adapting the riches and beauties of nature to his advantage, experiences a particular attachment to these new treasures, and in order to secure their peaceful enjoyment, he digs moats, puts up palisades, erects walls, and thus the enclosure is created. Emblematic of personality, the enclosure is a small empire built by a human being who cannot increase his power without also increasing the concerns that threaten it.

We can easily see that in its early development the art of gardens cannot advance rapidly. In order to hasten its course it is important that the idea of shared enjoyment be added to the desire for private pleasure.

But how can this idea be implemented?

Through hospitality, which is a simple feeling emanating from nature; or else through vanity, which I shall call “ostentatious,” for it is an artificial sentiment, a construct of society. To humanity’s shame, the first of these feelings is not the one that propels the art of gardens to its most brilliant successes.

Let us imagine the dwellings of the patriarchs.⁶ Let us consider, in our own countryside, the isolated establishments of people who are still simple in their ways and limited in their wealth.

Let us finally recall the garden of Alcinoüs:⁷ a four-acre orchard, surrounded by a thorny hedge. Free-growing fruit trees charmed onlookers with the abundance and beauty of their fruit, with their selection and variety. In the arrangement of the trees was the only evidence of the sovereign’s art.

A kitchen garden, cultivated with care, offered, in addition, useful produce in its various sections. Two springs dispensed water, one through the garden it irrigated, the other along the walls of the residence all the way to the front, where it benefited the citizenry.

Such, Homer tells us, were the magnificent gifts with which the gods had embellished Alcinoüs’s dwelling. Let us rather say that these were the respectable conditions of those no doubt happy times, conditions well adapted to the noble simplicity of heroes and hospitable princes.

But this was in the distant past. Such customs do not last long. Our arts today, dominated by luxury, no longer owe the perfection they are acquiring to hospitality. It is rather “ostentatious” vanity that stimulates their advancement and carries them to their highest successes. Powerful and enterprising magician that it is in opulent societies, vanity causes most idle and wealthy men to adopt roles without which their luxuries would be useless to them, their leisure a burden. Engaged in such role-playing, so necessary to their idleness, they strike us as magnificent and sensuous, as enthusiasts of the arts, of talents, of pleasures, and sometimes as capricious eccentrics, or servile imitators of foreign fashions and peculiarities.

Taste, sensibility, and intelligence are necessary in the performance of these roles; unfortunately, luxury, leisure, and pretension cannot generate them. These actors, however, when they go on stage, strive to impose on everything around them the style they have adopted. If this style results from ill-conceived means or disorganized ideas, it is deemed ridiculous. But if it is the product of felicitous innovations based on nature or sanctioned by convention, then it is admired by the spectators, and its success gives rise to new arts, or at least to new and evolving types of amusement and pleasure.

In order to enrich and diversify these new arts, we ordinarily turn to picturesque,⁸ poetic, or romantic⁹ inventions, which are related to the fictional and the imaginary. Can one possibly doubt their hold on people! However, among the ideas that imagination uses, those called pastoral are no doubt the most suitable to the embellishment of the countryside. But our notions of what was pastoral in the ancient world have become corrupted. And if those we identify today by that name descend from the ancient ones, they are to them as our city women, adorned with rich fabrics and ribbons, are to their grandmothers, who showed to advantage a modest dress trimmed only with a spray of flowers.

Let us examine, however, what embellishments modern pastoral could still bring to a rural establishment, provided that a well-controlled art were employed to organize the useful contributions of the countryside in the most satisfactory manner. Examination of such details will se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Essay on Gardens
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments