People : André Le Nôtre , From Versailles To Greenwich Park, Garden Designer to the Kings…..

André Le Nôtre (12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700, occasionally rendered as André Le Nostre) was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. Most notably, he was the landscape architect who made the design and construction for the park of the Palace of Versailles, and his work represents the height of the French formal garden style, or jardin à la française.

Prior to working on Versailles, Le Nôtre collaborated with Louis Le Vau and Charles Le Brun on the park at Vaux-le-Vicomte. His other works include the design of gardens and parks at Chantilly, Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud and Saint-Germain. His contribution to planning was also significant: at the Tuileries he extended the westward vista, which later became the avenue of the Champs-Élysées and comprise the Axe historique.

Biography

Early life

André Le Nôtre was born in Paris, into a family of gardeners. Pierre Le Nôtre, who was in charge of the gardens of the Palais des Tuileries in 1572, may have been his grandfather. André’s father Jean Le Nôtre was also responsible for sections of the Tuileries gardens, initially under Claude Mollet, and later as head gardener, during the reign of Louis XIII. André was born on 12 March 1613, and was baptised at the Église Saint-Roch. His godfather at the ceremony was an administrator of the royal gardens, and his godmother was the wife of Claude Mollet.

The family lived in a house within the Tuilieries, and André thus grew up surrounded by gardening, and quickly acquired both practical and theoretical knowledge. The location also allowed him to study in the nearby Palais du Louvre, part of which was then used as an academy of the arts. He learned mathematics, painting and architecture, and entered the atelier of Simon Vouet, painter to Louis XIII, where he met and befriended the painter Charles Le Brun. He learned classical art and perspective, and studied for several years under the architect François Mansart, a friend of Le Brun.

Career

In 1635, Le Nôtre was named the principal gardener of the king’s brother Gaston, duc d’Orléans. On 26 June 1637, Le Nôtre was appointed head gardener at the Tuileries, taking over his father’s position. He had primary responsibiliity for the areas of the garden closest to the palace, including the orangery built by Simon Bouchard. In 1643 he was appointed “draughtsman of plants and terraces” for Anne of Austria, the queen mother, and from 1645 to 1646 he worked on the modernisation of the gardens of the Château de Fontainebleau.

He was later put in charge of all the royal gardens of France, and in 1657 he was further appointed Controller-General of the Royal Buildings. There are few direct references to Le Nôtre in the royal accounts, and Le Nôtre himself seldom wrote down his ideas or approach to gardening. He expressed himself purely through his gardens. He became a trusted advisor to Louis XIV, and in 1675 he was ennobled by the King. He and Le Brun even accompanied the court at the siege of Cambrai in 1677.

In 1640, he married Françoise Langlois. They had three children, although none survived to adulthood.

Vaux-le-Vicomte

André Le Nôtre’s first major garden design was undertaken for Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s Superintendent of Finances. Fouquet began work on the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte in 1657, employing the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Le Brun, and Le Nôtre. The three designers worked in partnership, with Le Nôtre laying out a grand, symmetrical arrangement of parterres, pools and gravel walks. Le Vau and Le Nôtre exploited the changing levels across the site, so that the canal is invisible from the house, and employed forced perspective to make the grotto appear closer than it really is. The gardens were complete by 1661, when Fouquet held a grand entertainment for the king. But only three weeks later, on 10 September 1661, Fouquet was arrested for embezzling state funds, and his artists and craftsmen were taken into the king’s service.

Versailles

From 1661, Le Nôtre was working for Louis XIV to build and enhance the garden and parks of the Château de Versailles. Louis extended the existing hunting lodge, eventually making it his primary residence and seat of power. Le Nôtre also laid out the radiating city plan of Versailles, which included the largest avenue yet seen in Europe, the Avenue de Paris.

In the following century, the Versailles design influenced Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s master plan for Washington, D.C. See, L’Enfant Plan.

Other gardens

France

In 1661, Le Nôtre was also working on the gardens at the Palace of Fontainebleau. In 1663 he was engaged at Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and Château de Saint-Cloud, residence of Philippe d’Orléans, where he would oversee works for many years. Also from 1663, Le Nôtre was engaged at Château de Chantilly, property of the Prince de Condé, where he worked with his brother-in-law Pierre Desgots until the 1680s. From 1664 he was rebuilding the gardens of the Tuileries, at the behest of Colbert, Louis’s chief minister, who still hoped the king would remain in Paris. In 1667 Le Nôtre extended the main axis of the gardens westward, creating the avenue which would become the Champs-Élysées. Colbert commissioned Le Nôtre in 1670, to alter the gardens of his own château de Sceaux, which was ongoing until 1683.

Abroad

In 1662, he provided designs for Greenwich Park in London, for Charles II of England. In 1670 Le Nôtre conceived a project for the Castle of Racconigi in Italy, and between 1674 and 1698 he remodelled the gardens of Venaria Reale, near Turin. In 1679, he visited Italy. His later advice was provided for Charlottenburg Palace and château de Cassel in Germany, and with plans for Windsor Castle.

Final works

Between 1679 and 1691, he was involved in the planning of the gardens of Château de Meudon for François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis.

His work has often been favorably compared and contrasted (“the antithesis”) to the œuvre of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the English landscape architect.

Hidden London : Christchurch Greyfriars Garden, Dick Whittington and Christopher Wren were former residents

Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden:

The garden is on the site of the Franciscan Church of Greyfriars, which was established in 1225, following the arrival from Italy in 1224 of 9 monks of the Franciscan order, called Greyfriars from the colour of their clothing. Four of the Greyfriars came to London, the remainder went to Canterbury. They first had a temporary establishment in Cornhill; as their influence grew, a mercer called John Ewin then bought them a piece of land in the parish of St Nicholas Shambles and various buildings were erected, one Lord Mayor of London building them a choir, another the body of a church. In 1306 a larger church was commenced, with support from Edward I’s second wife Margaret and other influential benefactors, the second largest medieval church in the City. Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor, founded a library here in 1429. Numerous well-known people were buried in the old church, including four Queens being Margaret, wife of Edward I (d.1317), Isabel, wife of Edward II (d.1358), Joan of the Tower, wife of Edward Bruce King of Scotland and Isabel, one time Queen of the Isle of Man.

After the Dissolution the church was used to house spoils taken from the French, but in 1546 Henry VIII gave the various buildings of the Priory, together with the parish churches of St Ewin in Newgate Market and St Nicholas in the Shambles and part of that of St Sepulchre, to the Mayor and Corporation of London, to be formed into one parish of ‘Christ’s Church within Newgate, founded by Henry VIII ‘on condition that the Corporation provided a vicar and five priests, one to attend the prisoners at Newgate when required. In 1552 Christ’s Hospital was founded to the north, inhabiting a number of the Greyfriars’ buildings and using the church as its chapel; the school buildings were demolished in 1902 when the school moved out of London. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilding of a new church designed by Wren commenced in 1687, completed in 1704. At that time the parish of St Leonard Foster Lane, burnt down but not rebuilt, was added to the parish of Christ Church. Wren’s church was smaller than the church it replaced, the remainder of the site to the west enclosed as the burial ground now a public garden called Newgate Street Garden (q.v.).

The body of the Wren church was gutted in 1940 and only the west tower now stands. It was decided not to rebuild the church although the steeple was restored by Lord Mottistone in 1960, with urns added to replace those removed in the C19th. The east wall of the church was demolished when the Corporation of London acquired the church site in 1963 for road widening in the 1960s. A rose garden was laid out in 1989 which copies the floor plan of the church. Rose beds and surrounding box hedge outline the nave of Wren’s church, with ten wooden towers in the beds representing the pillars that held up the roof. The garden has pergolas, seating and box-hedged beds, which represent the original position of the pews.

Hidden London : Postman’s Park, A Tropical Oasis in the middle of The City Of London

 

 

Postman’s Park

Postman’s Park is a park in central London, a short distance north of St Paul’s Cathedral. Bordered by Little Britain, Aldersgate Street, St. Martin’s Le Grand, King Edward Street, and the site of the former headquarters of the General Post Office (GPO), it is one of the largest parks in the City of London, the walled city which gives its name to modern London. Its name reflects its popularity amongst workers from the nearby GPO’s headquarters.

Postman’s Park opened in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard and burial ground of St Botolph’s Aldersgate church and expanded over the next 20 years to incorporate the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane, together with the site of housing demolished during the widening of Little Britain in 1880; the ownership of the last location became the subject of a lengthy dispute between the church authorities, the General Post Office, the Treasury, and the City Parochial Foundation. A shortage of space for burials in London meant that corpses were often laid on the ground and covered over with soil, thus elevating the park above the streets which surround it.

In 1900, the park became the location for George Frederic Watts’s Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a memorial to ordinary people who died while saving the lives of others and who might otherwise be forgotten, in the form of a loggia and long wall housing ceramic memorial tablets. Only four of the planned 120 memorial tablets were in place at the time of its opening, with a further nine tablets added during Watts’s lifetime. Watts’s wife, Mary Watts, took over the management of the project after Watts’s death in 1904 and oversaw the installation of a further 35 memorial tablets in the following four years along with a small monument to Watts. Later she became disillusioned with the new tile manufacturer and, with her time and money increasingly occupied by the running of the Watts Gallery, she lost interest in the project, and only five further tablets were added during her lifetime.

In 1972, key elements of the park, including the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, were grade II listed to preserve their character. Following the 2004 film Closer, based on the 1997 play Closer by Patrick Marber, Postman’s Park experienced a resurgence of interest; key scenes of both were set in the park itself. In June 2009 the Diocese of London added a new tablet to the Memorial, the first new addition for 78 years. In November 2013 a free mobile app, The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park, was launched which documents the lives and deaths of those commemorated on the memorial.