.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
The park of the château d'Ermenonville in the Oise near Senlis was the brainchild of René-Louis, Marquis de Girardin (1735-1808), who in his youth had been an officer in the army of Louis XV and an official at the court of Stanislas Leszcynski at Lunéville in Lorraine. Inheriting the château and its 200-acre grounds in 1763 and then, three years later, a vast fortune, Girardin set about transforming the park into a garden à l'anglaise. The more open, less formal layout of the English-style garden was very soon to be the height of fashion in France, and although the park at Ermenonville was not the first of its kind, the garden was highly influential (see J. de Cayeux, Hubert Robert et les jardins, Paris, 1987, pp. 93-101).
Assisting the marquis in this enterprise were the architect Jean-Marie Morel, who was responsible for a number of the buildings in the park such as the Pavillon du bocage and the Temple des Muses, and the Scottish jardinier, Thomas Blaikie, who, as early as 1767, had been responsible for the design of what was considered by some to be the first English-style garden in France, the parc du Raincy, owned by the duc de Penthièvre. Hubert Robert was also involved in the project at Ermenonville, although the limit of his involvement has been somewhat concealed by Girardin's reluctance to credit his collaborators fully. It is probable that Robert provided drawings for two of the principal monuments, the Temple de la Philosophie and the tomb of the French writer, philosopher and political theorist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both of which can be seen in the present composition. (ibid., pp. 98 and 100). The Temple, which was closely based on the famous Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, celebrated six philosophers, Newton, Descartes, Penn, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Each was depicted at the base of a column along with an appropriate inscription - 'Naturam' in the case of Rousseau.
In 1778, at the invitation of the Marquis, Rousseau went to reside at Ermenonville, where he would spend the final six weeks of his life. Rousseau's ideal of human excellence, which involved human beings acting together in a free and equitable moral community, was of central inspiration to the leaders of the Revolution, in particular for Robespierre and Saint-Just, who regarded themselves as egalitarian republicans obliged to do away with superfluities and corruption. The Marquis de Girardin had himself for some time been a friend and patron of Rousseau, and even his plans for the gardens drew inspiration from Rousseau's novels and philosophy of the nobility of Nature.
According to Leo Damrosch's 2005 biography of the philosopher, Rousseau and his wife Thérèse began their stay in a cottage at Ermenonville in late May 1778. On July 1, a visitor commented that `men are wicked’, to which Rousseau replied `men are wicked, yes, but Man is good’. The next morning he died of a sudden stroke, and was buried in a tomb that presumably Robert himself designed, with a relief carved by Jacques-Philippe Le Sueur, on the grounds' Île des Peupliers, an artificial island in the park's lake. After the philosopher's death, the Marquis renamed the park at Ermenonville in honor of Rousseau, and kept his remains there until they were moved to the Pantheon in Rome in 1794.
Robert also depicted Rousseau's tomb from different viewpoints in other compositions including that in the Stern sale, American Art Association, New York, April 1934, lot 843 and a capriccio from circa 1786-90 offered at Christie’s, New York on 2 November 2000, lot 260.
Assisting the marquis in this enterprise were the architect Jean-Marie Morel, who was responsible for a number of the buildings in the park such as the Pavillon du bocage and the Temple des Muses, and the Scottish jardinier, Thomas Blaikie, who, as early as 1767, had been responsible for the design of what was considered by some to be the first English-style garden in France, the parc du Raincy, owned by the duc de Penthièvre. Hubert Robert was also involved in the project at Ermenonville, although the limit of his involvement has been somewhat concealed by Girardin's reluctance to credit his collaborators fully. It is probable that Robert provided drawings for two of the principal monuments, the Temple de la Philosophie and the tomb of the French writer, philosopher and political theorist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both of which can be seen in the present composition. (ibid., pp. 98 and 100). The Temple, which was closely based on the famous Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, celebrated six philosophers, Newton, Descartes, Penn, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Each was depicted at the base of a column along with an appropriate inscription - 'Naturam' in the case of Rousseau.
In 1778, at the invitation of the Marquis, Rousseau went to reside at Ermenonville, where he would spend the final six weeks of his life. Rousseau's ideal of human excellence, which involved human beings acting together in a free and equitable moral community, was of central inspiration to the leaders of the Revolution, in particular for Robespierre and Saint-Just, who regarded themselves as egalitarian republicans obliged to do away with superfluities and corruption. The Marquis de Girardin had himself for some time been a friend and patron of Rousseau, and even his plans for the gardens drew inspiration from Rousseau's novels and philosophy of the nobility of Nature.
According to Leo Damrosch's 2005 biography of the philosopher, Rousseau and his wife Thérèse began their stay in a cottage at Ermenonville in late May 1778. On July 1, a visitor commented that `men are wicked’, to which Rousseau replied `men are wicked, yes, but Man is good’. The next morning he died of a sudden stroke, and was buried in a tomb that presumably Robert himself designed, with a relief carved by Jacques-Philippe Le Sueur, on the grounds' Île des Peupliers, an artificial island in the park's lake. After the philosopher's death, the Marquis renamed the park at Ermenonville in honor of Rousseau, and kept his remains there until they were moved to the Pantheon in Rome in 1794.
Robert also depicted Rousseau's tomb from different viewpoints in other compositions including that in the Stern sale, American Art Association, New York, April 1934, lot 843 and a capriccio from circa 1786-90 offered at Christie’s, New York on 2 November 2000, lot 260.