European Garden Design

18th century British Garden Plans

This pair of English garden plans were drawn in a naive hand in brown ink touched with red watercolor to suggest rocaille. The bold geometry of the plan, dated 1763, features a prominent central bowling green surrounded by a temple, a canal, and a large house with a courtyard. The accompanying drawing shows a plan for a decorative loggia and bridge of rocaille.

18th century Plan for Italianate Garden by Leon Dufourny (1754-1818)

Leon Dufourny was a French scholar, architect and designer known for his neoclassical architecture and garden designs. Dufourny studied under the tutelage of the renowned neoclassical French architects Julien David Le Roy and Marie-Joseph Peyre. From 1787-1794, the French Republic sent Dufourny to Italy to serve as Commissioner to the King of Naples, during which time Dufourny studied ancient Greek temples. His designs often include natural motifs taken from botany, archaeology and geology, a practice resonant with the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment.

The multi-sheet drawing Plan for an Italianate Garden and Villa exemplifies the ways in which Dufourny fused garden and architectural design to construct a landscape synthesizing interiority and exteriority. Dufourny’s structural plans for the fountain, grounds, and stepped parterres are elongated and contain visible architectural underdrawing. Over these pencil drawings, Dufourny applied watercolor washes to articulate the plans for a large villa featuring extensive Italianate gardens. Read More

18th century plan for land in Schellebelle

Schellebelle is a village near Ghent, Belgium on the banks of the river Scheldt. The village grew out of a settlement on the Scheldt that emerged in the Gallo-Roman period. Like much of Flanders, the low elevation of Schellebelle determines the possible engineering options for landscape and urban development. As such, precise technology for the lock and canal systems necessitated intricate designs for landscape development.

Project for a Landscape Garden near Schellebelle features a detailed landscape design in ink, watercolor and black pencil. Several plots are labeled “landt van den pagter” (land from the covenant) and “potasie hof (sic)” (potential court, or, kitchen garden). The garden design is depicted from multiple perspectives, offering both birds-eye views of the shapes of the land and its garden allotments, as well as moments of Cartesian perspectivalism: the verdant watercolor depiction of individual trees, buildings, vegetation and fencing are rendered along Cartesian axes with varying vanishing points. Such varied perspectives likely enabled its designer to establish both a mathematical and geographical accuracy while allowing for an aesthetic understanding of the ideal garden design. Read more

18th century Plan for an English Garden

Jardin Anglais: Project for an English Landscape Garden, c. 1785 exemplifies trends in European landscape and garden design in the late 18th century. The artist articulated with pen, ink and watercolor the plans for a garden in the style of the Jardin Anglais, or, the English landscape garden. The Jardin Anglais emerged as the preeminent style for grand garden designs in England during the early 18th century, and later replaced the geometric and symmetrical French garden design. The Jardin Anglais was centered on an idealized view of nature; it took inspiration from landscape painting and typically included a lake, rolling lawns, winding paths amid groves of trees and recreations of classical temples.

Jardin Anglais: Project for an English Landscape Garden refers to these trends in landscape design. At its left, it features the structural Italianate garden design with its tightly organized paths and lawns. Across the hedges, the path winds into a verdant, utopian garden with winding walks in lush groves and neoclassical monuments offering moments of respite for the rambler. Read more

French Plan of Building and Grounds by Leonard Seheult (1771-1840)

François Leonard Seheult was a French architect and designer active in the 18th and 19th centuries in France and Italy. Known for his landscape architecture, Seheult’s design features the symmetrical, geometric parterres established within the Italianate tradition. Seheult studied architecture in Nantes before studying at the Royal Academy of Architecture in Paris from 1786 to 1790. In Paris, he studied with the royal architect Antoine-François Peyre. Following a study trip to Italy from 1791-1793, Seheult returned to Nantes with drawings from Italian town and country homes, depicting fragments of architecture, garden and landscape design. In Plan of Villa and Parterres the terraced parterres, box hedges and symmetrical path structures refer to the Italianate and neoclassical design popular in Europe at the time.

Given the architectural composition of the main structure, it is possible that Plan of Villa and Parterres was created for the Gentilhommière de la Meslerie, a château in Saint-Julien-de-Concelles, Loire-Atlantique, France. Seheult was commissioned as architect for this château, which features a circular living room that opens as a semicircle onto the rear terrace. Read More

18th century French cadastral plan by Claude-Claire Niépce (1763-1828)

Claude-Claire Niépce was a land commissioner in his hometown of Chalon-sur-Saone, French. Dated 1788, this drawing is a cadastral plan, a notarized document that registered the shape, size and ownership division of each land parcel with specific crop use listed in a legend.

French Fountain Design by Jean-Baptiste Plantar (1790-1879)

Jean-Baptiste Plantar was a 19th century French sculptural ornamentalist with an active design workshop. Plantar worked in particular at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris and at Père Lachaise Cemetery, where he is known to have designed several notable tombs. Plantar designed such decorative objects as chandeliers, chairs, balcony benches, prie-dieu, fireplaces and fountains. Adept at various techniques in his designs, including graphite, watercolor, ink and lithography, Fountain Design is a pencil drawing featuring a design for an ornate fountain, with delicate streams of water cascading around the central column. Read More