Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 5(4), pp. 125 - 133
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2017.050401
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The Jardin - Anglais as Public Image of the Self

Janet R. White ^*
School of Architecture, University of Nevada, USA

ABSTRACT

At first glance, the jardin-anglais of 18^th-century France appears to be composed of a standard set of pieces. A closer examination of specific gardens, however, reveals that elements were often chosen in order to "fit" the garden to the patron. These choices were intended to make each garden into a kind of portrait of its owner, an important means of projection of self to others. Three gardens are examined here: Marie Antoinette's at the Petit Trianon at Versailles; the Desert d' Ermenonville, the garden of the Marquis de Girardin; and Monsieur de Monville's Desert de Retz. A "close reading" of features of each reveals that each plays on the standard repertoire to turn the garden into a public self-portrait of its creator as he or she wished to be seen. They add up to three very different public images of the self-projected by three gardens with very different atmospheres. The new innate self of the second half of the eighteenth century was to be "cultivated by a spontaneous relation to nature" [1]. It is perhaps not surprising then to find nature as expressed in the garden being in turn made into the means of projecting the self to others.

KEYWORDS
Eighteenth-century, Jardin - Anglais, French Gardens

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Janet R. White , "The Jardin - Anglais as Public Image of the Self," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 125 - 133, 2017. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2017.050401.

(b). APA Format:
Janet R. White (2017). The Jardin - Anglais as Public Image of the Self. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 5(4), 125 - 133. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2017.050401.