English Gardens in Pre-Revolutionary France - Petit Trianon
In September 1777 Marie-Antoinette invited her husband and a select number of courtiers to an inaugural fête at the Jardin Anglais of the Petit-Trianon, her personal domain within the park of Versailles. Over the preceding three years, despite the climate of fiscal austerity, the queen and her architect Richard Mique had succeeded in replacing Louis XV’s celebrated botanical gardens with rolling fields, a meandering river and clumps and woodlands. Subsequent years witnessed the addition of a temple, grotto, a dramatic alpine outcropping, and a hamlet. The prevailing interpretation of this garden is as an escapist fantasy, a refuge from a hostile court for a frivolous and unhappy young woman. This talk by Gabriel Wick, lecturer at the Paris campus of New York University, considers it in another light – a celebration of the autonomy and formidable influence of what was fast becoming one of the most powerful factions at court, the Partie de la Reine.
Time: 18:00 BST
