What is a garden? Why were they created as they were? What influences were at play in garden making, and how have gardens evolved and developed over time? These are the questions we will explore as we traverse the history of gardens through the ages.
Following on from our opening talks on early gardens, this second series will examine how gardens developed during the 17th century. We will explore how exotic plants from around the world started to appear in European gardens, and were captured in botanical art, before the tumultuous impact of the English civil wars on gardens and gardening from the 1640s. The second part of the century saw the rise of extravagant, dramatic styles, now known as baroque gardens and exemplified by the work of André Le Nôtre for the Sun King at Versailles. We will explore these gardens through an analysis of the work of Le Nôtre and his contemporaries in France, and the series will end with a talk scrutinizing how the European baroque style played out in England.
This ticket – purchase through Eventbrite HERE – is for this individual talk and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire [second] series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25) Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.
Visiting André Le Nôtre’s masterpieces, Chantilly, Vaux, Saint-Cloud, Sceaux, Versailles, the Grand Trianon, we encounter a series of static images, born out of the head of a ‘humble’ polymath for the greater glory of a megalomaniacal master. The myth of the sudden invention of the Louis XIV Grand Manner was carefully cultivated even at the time, but the roots of the Le Nôtrean taste stretched back to previous reigns, and designers. But what was the purpose of these linear perspectives and expanses of gravel? Of what were they made? How were they built and maintained?
This talk examines the construction and formal vocabulary of these compositions, but also their antecedents in garden and military architecture, and their usages and significance in the social and political practices of the court. The last part of the talk considers the afterlife of the idiom, its evolution under Louis XV and Louis XVI, its neglect and destruction in the 19th century, and its rehabilitation in the Belle Époque.
Dr Gabriel Wick is a landscape historian and curator. He teaches history of architecture and urbanism at the Paris campus of New York University and also lectures for the École du Louvre. He received his master’s in landscape architecture from UC Berkeley, a master’s of historic landscape conservation from ÉNSA-Versailles, and a doctorate in history from Queen Mary – University of London. His most recent book Gardens in Revolution: landscapes and political culture in France, 1760–1792 will be published in autumn 2024.
