The Jardin Anglais movement culminated in two vast and extravagant landscape gardens created on the eve of the Revolution, the Marquis de Laborde’s Méréville and the Princesse de Monaco’s Betz. Created on vast sites with essentially unlimited budgets, both landscapes offered a succession of arcadian, and lyrical scenes punctuated by unsettling confrontations with the force of ‘untamed nature’ and melancholic ruins. Laborde and Monaco would bring together France’s foremost artistic talents – Hubert Robert, Pajou, Belanger and Brongniart – to create these total immersive artworks. While Betz is currently inaccessible, a forthcoming exhibition at Chantilly will explore the story of its owner and her remarkable creation. Méréville, after long years of ruin and neglect, which endowed the garden with its own poetry, is currently the subject of one of the most ambitious and costly garden restoration projects on the continent. In this final Gardens Trust lecture on April 11 at 2 pm, Gabriel Wick will speak on this garden, part of the Jardin Anglais movement. £5 Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after and will be available for 1 week.
Gabriel Wick is a lecturer at the Paris campus of New York University, and an independent researcher and curator. He has authored a number of monographs and articles on 18th-century French landscape gardens, including La Roche-Guyon, the domain of the Noailles, Monceau, Méréville, Betz and Rambouillet. He is currently curating a permanent exhibition at Rambouillet on its Jardin Anglais and advising the Fondation Chambrun on the restoration of Lafayette’s Lagrange. He received his doctorate in history from the University of London (QMUL) and holds a master’s in landscape architecture from UC Berkeley and historic landscape conservation from the École Nationale Superieure d’Architecture – Versailles.
