Gardens in revolution : landscapes and political culture in France, 1760-1792

In the mid-1760s, France experienced what the Prince de Ligne, an aphorist and garden enthusiast, hailed as ‘The Revolution in Taste’. A small number of dissident, philosophically minded aristocrats redesigned their gardens in the whimsical and eccentric English style. The informal character and apparent naturalism of these English gardens stood in stark contrast to the symmetry, regularity and proudly assumed artifice of the French formal gardens, a centuries-old legacy of André Le Nôtre and his master Louis XIV. The English-inspired aesthetic was all the more controversial given that France had just suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of England during the Seven Years’ War.

Spanning the three decades from the end of the Seven Years’ War to the abolition of the monarchy, this book traces how estates and gardens such as Marie-Antoinette’s Petit-Trianon and Saint-Cloud, the Count of Artois’s Bagatelle, or the Duke of Orléans’s Monceau and Le Raincy, served as instruments of communication, expression and self-representation. It argues that royal, aristocratic and public gardens enabled members of the dynasty to redefine their identity, transform their interactions with the press and the people, and, in so doing, challenge the limited influence and autonomy granted to them within the Bourbon state.