Jean-Marie Morel (28 March 1728 – 10 August 1810), the author of ''La Théorie des Jardins'' (Paris 1776), was a trained architect and surveyor, who produced a substantial and popular work advocating the "natural" landscape style of gardening in France, a
French landscape garden
The French landscape garden (french: jardin anglais, jardin à l'anglaise, jardin paysager, jardin pittoresque, jardin anglo-chinois) is a style of garden inspired by idealized romantic landscapes and the paintings of Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrai ...
. Morel never visited England to see the
English garden
The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
style, but his book profited from the published theories of
Thomas Whately
Thomas Whately (1726 – 26 May 1772), an English politician and writer, was a Member of Parliament (1761–1768), who served as Commissioner on the Board of Trade, as Secretary to the Treasury under Lord Grenville, and as Under-secretary of Stat ...
and
Claude-Henri Watelet
Claude-Henri Watelet (28 August 1718 – 12 January 1786) was a rich French '' fermier-général'' who was an amateur painter, a well-respected etcher, a writer on the arts and a connoisseur of gardens. Watelet's inherited privilege of farming t ...
and from the experience he had gained from his close association with the
marquis de Girardin at
Ermenonville
Ermenonville () is a commune in the Oise department, northern France. Ermenonville is notable for its park named for Jean-Jacques Rousseau by René Louis de Girardin. Rousseau's tomb was designed by the painter Hubert Robert, and sits on the Isl ...
. Girondin's own ''De la Composition des paysages'' appeared in 1777.
History
Morel was chief architect to the
Princes of Conti
The title of Prince of Conti (French: ''prince de Conti'') was a French noble title, assumed by a cadet branch of the princely house of Bourbon-Condé.
History
The title derives its name from Conty, a small town in northern France, c. 35 km ...
from as early as 1765. John Harris has identified Mme de Boufflers, the mistress and hostess of Louis-François de Bourbon, prince de Conti (1717–76), the friend and support of
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
and the first woman of fashion to open her
salon to foreigners, as the first French gardener in a landscape style that genuinely could be called "Brownian", that is, reflective of the style of
Lancelot "Capability" Brown
Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English la ...
. On her return from England in 1765, she immediately grassed over her gardens, both at the Hôtel Saint-Simon in the ''
Temple
A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...
'', Paris and then at the house at
Auteuil, which she acquired in 1773. The results— "begotten by her on an English gardener"
Horace Walpole remarked— which were a revelation to all Paris, must have been deeply impressive to the Conti architect, Morel.
Ermenonville
Morel was the architect in charge at Ermenonville from the mid-1760s. He enjoyed a long career that was focused almost entirely on garden design. He worked on some four dozen parks and gardens, including
Guiscard
Guiscard () is a commune in the Oise department in northern France.
See also
*Communes of the Oise department
The following is a list of the 679 communes of the Oise department of France.
The communes cooperate in the following intercommu ...
,
Arcelot,
Couternon, Ermenonville,
Casson
Cassons or Casson is the name of a Yokuts people, Yokuts Native American tribe in central eastern California. The Cassons are also called the Gashowu. The Casson Yokuts territory extended from the eastern side of San Joaquin Valley floor eastward ...
,
Launay
Launay () is a commune in the Eure department in Normandy in northern France.
Population
See also
*Communes of the Eure department
The following is a list of the 585 communes of the Eure department of France.
The communes cooperate in t ...
and
La Malmaison
La Malmaison () is a Communes of France, commune in the Aisne Departments of France, department in Hauts-de-France in northern France.
Population
See also
* Communes of the Aisne department
* Battle of La Malmaison
References
C ...
. His popular treatise offers extensive descriptions of Guiscard and Ermenonville, as illustrative examples. Where we have documentation, as at Ermenonville, it appears that Morel claims more credit for its design than is due. Of all French gardeners of the picturesque school, he stood furthest from the fashionable and decorative Anglo-chinois aspects of garden design, with its crowded and petty effects, and advocated a broader, plainer style, both morally meaningful and more directly imitative of nature.
[Agnieszka Morawinska, "Eighteenth-Century 'Paysages Moralisés'" ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 38.3 (July 1977), pp. 461-475, quotes from Morel's ''Théorie''.] Morel coined the French term for the landscape professional, ''architecte-paysagiste'', as early as 1804; his ideas were far more influential on the later landscape style of the early nineteenth century than on his immediate contemporaries.
See also
*
French landscape garden
The French landscape garden (french: jardin anglais, jardin à l'anglaise, jardin paysager, jardin pittoresque, jardin anglo-chinois) is a style of garden inspired by idealized romantic landscapes and the paintings of Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrai ...
*
Landscape gardens index
*
Landscape design history
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...
References
Notes
Bibliography
*Disponzio, Joseph John, 2001. "Jean-Marie Morel: A Catalogue of his Landscape Design," ''Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes.'' John Dixon Hunt, ed. Nos. 3 & 4 (July–December 2001)
*Disponzio, Joseph John, 2002. "Jean-Marie Morel and the Invention of Landscape Architecture," in ''Tradition and Innovation in French Garden Art''. eds. John Dixon Hunt and Michel Conan. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press) 2002.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morel, Jean-Marie
18th-century French architects
French landscape garden designers
1728 births
1810 deaths
Architects from Lyon