Daniel Marot or Daniel Marot the Elder (1661–1752) was a French-born Dutch
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
,
furniture
Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., Stool (seat), stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (table (furniture), tables), storing items, working, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Furnitur ...
designer and engraver
at the forefront of the classicizing Late Baroque
Louis XIV style
The Louis XIV style or ''Louis Quatorze'' ( , ), also called French classicism, was the style of architecture and decorative arts intended to glorify King Louis XIV and his reign. It featured majesty, harmony and regularity. It became the official ...
. He worked for a long time in England and the
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...
, where he was naturalised in 1709.
Life
Born in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, he was a pupil of
Jean Le Pautre
Jean Le Pautre or Lepautre (baptised 28 June 1618; died 2 February 1682) was a French designer and engraver, the elder brother of the architect Antoine Le Pautre, the father of the engravers Pierre Le Pautre and Jacques Le Pautre, and the unc ...
and the son of
Jean Marot
Jean Marot (; Mathieu, near Caen, 1463 – c. 1526) was a French poet of the late 15th and early 16 century and the father of the French Renaissance poet Clément Marot. He is often grouped with the " Grands Rhétoriqueurs". Jean Marot seems ...
, who was also an architect and engraver. Marot was working independently as an engraver from an early age, making engravings of designs by
Jean Bérain, one of Louis XIV's official designers at the
Manufacture des Gobelins, where far more than
tapestry
Tapestry is a form of Textile arts, textile art which was traditionally Weaving, woven by hand on a loom. Normally it is used to create images rather than patterns. Tapestry is relatively fragile, and difficult to make, so most historical piece ...
was being produced. The family were
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...
s and were part of the wave of émigrés who left France in the year of the
Edict of Fontainebleau
The Edict of Fontainebleau (18 October 1685, published 22 October 1685) was an edict issued by French King Louis XIV and is also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted Huguenots the right to prac ...
and
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Fontainebleau (18 October 1685, published 22 October 1685) was an edict issued by French King Louis XIV and is also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted Huguenots the right to pra ...
(1685) to settle in Holland.
[ Daniel Marot brought the fully developed court style of Louis XIV to Holland, and later to London. In the end, the English style which is loosely called "William and Mary" owed much to his manner.
In the ]Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...
, Marot was employed by the Stadthouder, who later became William III of England
William III (William Henry; ; 4 November 1650 – 8 March 1702), also known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of County of Holland, Holland, County of Zeeland, Zeeland, Lordship of Utrecht, Utrec ...
; in particular, he is associated with designing interiors in the palace of Het Loo
Paleis Het Loo ( , meaning "The Lea") is a palace in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, built by the House of Orange-Nassau.
History
The symmetrical Dutch Baroque building was designed by Jacob Roman and Johan van Swieten and was built between 1684 an ...
, from 1684 on. Though his name cannot be attached to any English building (and he does not have an entry in Howard Colvin
Sir Howard Montagu Colvin (15 October 1919 – 27 December 2007) was a British architectural historian who produced two of the most outstanding works of scholarship in his field: ''A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–18 ...
's exhaustive ''Dictionary of British Architects'') we know from his own engraving that he designed the great hall of audience for the States-General at the Hague.[ He also decorated many Dutch country-houses,][ introducing the “salon” and popularizing ornamented ceilings in The United Provinces/ Netherlands.
In 1694, he traveled with William to ]London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, where he was appointed one of his architects and Master of Works. In England his activities appear to have been concentrated at Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace is a Listed building, Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. Opened to the public, the palace is managed by Historic Royal ...
, where he designed the garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...
parterre
A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, plats, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the ...
s, which were swept away in the following generation and have been restored at the end of the 20th century. His designs for the Great Fountain Garden survive. Much of the furniture, especially the mirrors, guéridon
A guéridon is a small table supported by one or more columns, or sculptural human or Mythology, mythological figures, often with a circular top. The guéridon originated in France towards the middle of the 17th century. The supports for early gu� ...
s and state beds, in the new State Rooms readied for William at Hampton Court bears unmistakable traces of his authorship; the tall and monumental embroidered state beds, with their plumes of ostrich feathers, their elaborate valances and cantonnieres agree very closely with his later published designs[ (''illustration, right'').
After William's death Marot returned to Holland where he lived at the Noordeinde 164 in The Hague from 1720 until his death in 1752. The house with his salon, kitchen, hallway and possibly some of his ceilings still exists.
We owe much of our knowledge of his work to the folio volume of his furniture designs published at Amsterdam in 1712. Not surprisingly the designs show strong French and Dutch influences; what reads as their "English" look is more probably the result of Marot's court style on other London designers.
Marot was a nephew of ]Pierre Gole
Pierre Gole (''ca'' 1620, Bergen, North Holland – 27 November 1684) was an influential Parisian ''ébéniste'' (cabinet maker), of Dutch ethnic group, Dutch extraction.
Born at Bergen, North Holland, Bergen in the Dutch Republic, he moved to ...
as he was the son of Gole's sister-in-law. He married Gole's niece.
Engravings
In his engraved
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an inta ...
designs, Marot's range was extraordinarily wide. He designed practically every detail in the internal ornamentation of the house: carved chimneypieces, plaster ceilings, panels for walls, girandole
A girandole () is an ornamental branched candle holder consisting of several lights that may be on a stand or mounted on the wall, either by itself or attached to a mirror. Girandole has been used to refer to a number of different objects and des ...
s and wall brackets,[ and side tables with their pairs of tall stands. He also designed gold and silver plate.][ The craze for collecting china which was at its height in his time is illustrated in his lavish designs for receptacles for porcelain: in one of his plates there are more than 300 pieces of china on the chimneypiece alone.][
]
References
External reference
Life and Design Examples
''Das Ornamentwerk des Daniel Marot: in 264 Lichtdrucken nachgebildet''
1892 at the University of Heidelberg.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marot, Daniel
French furniture designers
1661 births
1752 deaths
Architects from Paris
French Protestants
17th-century French architects
18th-century Dutch architects
French Baroque architects
French emigrants
Immigrants to the Dutch Republic