In April 1771 the Princes of the Blood, cousins of the king and key figures in the absolutist regime, quit Versailles in protest at Louis XV’s repression of the Parlements. This self-imposed exile was intended to demonstrate to the public and the government the princes’ dismay at the crown’s policies and their support for the nascent party of opposition — the partie patriote. The most enthusiastic of the princely exiles was the duc de Chartres — mercurial, phenomenally rich, and dangerously unemployed. This heir to the house of Orléans revelled in the prominence and adulation that his boldly oppositional stance garnered him in Paris. While exiles from court had traditionally been forced to endure the rigours of life at their rural seats, the duc de Chartres had difficulty supporting the ennui of country life. His solution was Monceau – a country retreat and a landscape garden in microcosm, just within the city limits of Paris. This paper will explore Monceau not as it has traditionally been understood – as a private pleasure ground for the duke and his guests, but rather as a key element in Chartres’ attempt to redefine his public identity and to insert himself into political life. It will argue that following the winter of 1771 Monceau was reconceived as a stage upon which Chartres could represent his physical and ideological distance from court and his frustrations with the meagre prospects for advancement and autonomy his position in the princely hierarchy offered. In the context of Chartres’ subsequent embrace of radical politics, this paper will frame the practice of landscape gardening in the English-inflected picturesque mode as having been a means for the princely élite to express dissent while not running afoul of traditional notions of fidelity and unquestioning loyalty to the monarchy.
Gabriel Wick is a doctoral candidate at Queen Mary, University of London. His doctoral research, under the supervision of Colin Jones and Miles Ogborn, examines the political significance of the French high nobility’s embrace of English-inflected modes of landscape design in the decade from 1771 – 1781. He is the author of Un Paysage des lumières: le jardin anglais du château de La Roche-Guyon (Paris: Artlys, 2013) and an adjunct professor of architectural history at the American University of Paris and Parsons / the New School – Paris.
The 2014-15 Early Modern Seminar Series focuses on the topic of urbanity and the making of the public space. Scholars from diverse geographies of the early modern period consider facets of urban history and representations of the city in the period between the 15th and the 17th centuries. The series includes occasional gatherings of doctoral candidates at The Courtauld for a workshop to explore the kinds of questions the theme of the series might raise or reflect upon.