André Le Nôtre in Perspective - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300199392 ISBN 13: 9780300199390

Publisher: Editions Hazan, Paris, 2014

Synopsis

A beautifully illustrated investigation of the life, work, and legacy of the great 17th-century landscape and garden designer

André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), principal gardener to Louis XIV, was France’s greatest landscape and garden designer. The parks created by him at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles are the supreme examples of the French 17th-century style of garden design. He was responsible also for the central pathway through the Tuileries, which became the grand axis of Paris running to the Arc de Triomphe and on to La Défense.
 
This magnificent book sheds new light on the royal gardener’s life and his practice as a landscape architect, engineer and art collector, and examines the legacy of his influence. It highlights his major achievements and enhances our understanding of the French formal-garden model. Le Nôtre’s output is re-examined in terms of its social and cultural contexts; its artistic, technological, material and spatial components; and the dissemination of his ideas. The book contains illustrations of both original documents and the majority of extant drawings by Le Nôtre and his collaborators.  Comprehensive and impeccably researched, André Le Nôtre in Perspective brings together the scholarship of some of the world’s leading experts in early-modern art, gardens and allied fields.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin is research associate, Centre de recherche du château de Versailles and Laboratoire de l’École d’Architecture de Versailles. Georges Farhat is associate professor at the University of Toronto and a founding member of the Laboratoire de l’École d’Architecture de Versailles.

Review

“. . . explores [Le Nôtre’s] astounding creations . . . [and] examines how the visionary Frenchman’s work continues to reverberate in public spaces today.”—Mitchell Owens, Architectural Digest (Mitchell Owens Architectural Digest)

“This lavishly illustrated volume is published to mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great garden designer, André Le Notre, and coincides with a major exhibition at the Château de Versailles.”—Apollo Magazine (Apollo Magazine 2014-02-01)

“Sumptuous illustration is matched by excellent scholarship, covering everything from Le Notre’s origins and family connections, his knowledge of optics, his understanding of hydraulics and his taste in art, to the influence his gardening style had in Britain, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire.”—Ian Thompson, Apollo Magazine (Ian Thompson Apollo Magazine 2014-03-01)

Won an Award for Excellence in the Biography category for the 2014 Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Annual Literature Award. (Literature Award Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries 2014-04-11)

“[A] sumptuous volume. . . . Le Nôtre wrote no treatises and few letters, and this book aims at casting new light on him through a renewed analysis of the clues he left behind.”—New Yorker (New Yorker)

Winner of the 2015 J.B. Jackson Prize sponsored by the Foundation for Landscape Studies. (J.B. Jackson Foundation for Landscape Studies 2015-01-29)

Winner of the 2015 Philip Johnson Catalogue Award given by the Society of Architectural Historians. (Philip Johnson Exhibition Catalogue Award Society of Architectural Historians 2015-04-20)

About this edition

• Publisher: Editions Hazan, Paris
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0300199392
• ISBN 13: 9780300199390
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Bouchenot-Déchin Patricia, Farhat Georges