Stanislas's gardens revisited

Since the devastating fire of 2003 at Lunéville, there has been a renewed academic interest not only in re-imagining but also in re-conceptualising the lost gardens of King Stanislas. This post summarises a lecture given at the Institut Européen des Jardins et Paysages in 2022 by Thierry Franz, director of  the Musée du Château, which discusses some of the latest research.

Thierry Franz, "Les jardins de Lunéville sous S. Leszczynski : de folies en fabriques, un testament philosophique?"  Archives départementale du Calvados/Institut Européen des Jardins & Paysages, 01.03.2022. [YouTube video]

https://youtu.be/n35OCdg6uhc?si=tXNujouqNgyKoauO

[11: 35] A princely gardener of the Rococo era

Jean Pillement (?), Portrait of Stanislas in a
crown of flowers, c.1760-70. Musée lorrain, Nancy.

Thanks largely to the work of the art historian Monique Mosser, the era of the Rococo is now widely accepted as a significant phase in the development of French landscape architecture.  Stanislas, and his chief architect Emmanuel Héré, are recognised as major exponents of the new style.

Stanislas's own first experiments in garden design date from around 1715 when he was installed by Charles XII of Sweden as ruler of  the principality of Zweibrücken in the Rhineland-Palatinate.  Here, with the aid of a Swedish architect Jonas Erikson Sundahl, he constructed the small summer residence generally known by its Turkish name Tschifflik. This building, which still survives today,  has been extensively studied by the Polish scholar Jan Ostrowski. The design recalls the Turkish pavilions or "kiosks" which would have been familiar to Stanislas from exile in Bessarabia in 1709, but also shows contemporary Italianate influences.

A full understanding of Stanislas's building projects in Lorraine is hampered by a lack of documentary evidence.  In contrast to the extensive archives of Leopold and Francis III,  few records survive from the time of Stanislas. The loss of his building accounts is to be particularly regretted.  However, thanks to newly published manuscript journal of Nicolas Durival, we now know that, scarcely three weeks after his arrival at Lunéville, when he was still moving into the apartments, the Polish king was already actively planning improvements to the park laid out by Leopold.

Thierry Franz's detailed discussion begins with some of the smaller properties which Stanislas embellished in the course of his reign.  No trace survives of any of these gardens; they are now known only from the engravings published by Héré in his Recueil des plans of 1752-53, through contemporary accounts, or through paintings, a number of which were commissioned by Stanislas himself for his private apartments at Lunéville or the gallery at Einville.

The Châteaux of King Stanislas - La Malgrange and Commercy

 La Malgrange

André Joly, Château de La Malgrange, seen from des Goulottes, Musée Lorrain, Nancy. Wikimedia
The"Tableau Gillet"  This picture, which is probably belonged to Stanislas, shows the building work as yet unfinished.

  The Château at La Malgrange, today a suburb of Nancy, was an ancient  possession of the Dukes of Lorraine.  Leopold began its reconstruction but abandoned work in 1715, reputedly after the Elector of Bavaria complained that the palace was "too close to Nancy for a country house and too far away for a principal residence".  Stanislas, however, took possession of the site with enthusiasm, determined to create a grand new château, large enough to accommodate his Court for the belle saison, and to  provide a convenient stopover during  his frequent visits to Nancy.  Demolition of the existing buildings, left unfinished by Boffrand, began in June 1738, with the materials reused for the construction of the nearby church of Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours.  By 1741, the new plans were broadly in place.

The Châteaux of King Stanislas - Chanteheux; Jolivet; Einville

How could he have all these houses built? He must have the philosopher's stone.  

Comment of Louis XV, reported to Montesquieu (quoted by Pierre Boyé)

As soon as he was installed at Lunéville, Stanislas began work.  Every day, the morning was devoted to his favourite pastime: surrounded by his seventeen architects, painters and sculptors, he examined the plans, decided on projects, discussed, ordered, personally directed the construction of his palaces and country houses; he went out to the sites to encourage the workmen, to see the effect of his combinations; he built, demolished, reconstruct and spent the best part of his revenues. 

Gaston Maugras, La Cour de Lunéville au xviiie siecle (1904), p.209.

The residences of King Stanislas - adapted from Google Maps

Chanteheux 

Stanislas rapidly settled into a fruitful and creative relationship with his architect Emmanuel Héré.  In the years 1738 to 1741 the latter embarked on a whole series of projects for his royal master: the  château at La Malgrange  and the nearby church of  Bonsecours (1738-41); the Trèfle (1738) and the Pavillon de la Cascade (1743) at Lunéville; and the Hôtel des Missions in Nancy (1741-43).  It was in 1741 too that he began work at Chanteheux to the east of Les Bosquets on an ambitious new pavilion which was to be the Trianon of Stanislas's "Versailles lorrain".

The Châteaux of King Stanislas - Parc des Bosquets [cont.]

[continued from previous post]

The Bas Bosquets and the Chartreuses

The Chartreuses were a series of garden structures built between 1741 and 1744 in the Bas Bosquets in the area between the great oval basin and the newly reconfigured Grand Canal.  The assemblage resembled a small village of cottages each with its own garden. The Trèfle, which already stood at the end of the northern arm of the canal, was incorporated into the group. The intention was to lease out the properties to individual Courtiers and guests, to allow them a fashionable taste of the simple life. 

Contemporary plan of the Bas Bosquets c.1750

https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/memoire/IVR41_20165410760NUC2A

Anonymous view the Bas Bosquets with the Chartreuses in the foreground.

Painting from the gallery at Einville.  Musée du château, Lunéville - destroyed in 2003 [Wikimedia]

The idea was not entirely novel.  The name "chartreuses" - derived from the dwellings of the Carthusian order, where each monk was required to tend his own garden - was a popular designation for a hermitage or garden retreat;  the duchesse du Maine had her "chartreuse" at Sceaux which Stanislas visited in May 1743 (Luynes, Mémoires, v., p.5)  His immediate model was probably Mansart's pavilions at Marly, which were also orientated towards an axial canal. 

The Châteaux of King Stanislas - the Parc des Bosquets

The Park of Duke Leopold  

At Lunéville, Stanislas also inherited the Park of "Les Bosquets" to the rear of the palace, which he embellished and ultimately extended to cover some 30 hectares.  The landscaping work under Leopold had been directed between 1711 and 1719 by Yves des Hours, a disciple of Le Nôtre, who set out a jardin à la française of classical design. The remains of the ancient town fortifications were used to provide the axis for the main terrace, with a series of formal parterres flanked by wooded walkways ("les bosquets").  The waters of the River Vezouze fed a new Grand Canal overlooked by three grassed and sloping paths. In 1724 Louis Gervais, future architect of the park at Schönbrunn, took over from Des Hours, bringing with him elements of more innovative, characteristically Rococo garden design (see Refs). 

An ambitious hydraulic system had been put in place from 1710 by the engineer Didier Lalance.  The   Grand Canal formed the northern boundary of the Park whilst, to the east, a feeder canal channelled further water  from a reservoir in the bois de Mondon, ten kilometres away.  In 1731 a hydraulic machine or "tower" (designed by  by PhilippeVaryinge (1684-1746) and built by Jacques Richard "fontainier du duc") was installed on the level of the grand canal, capable of elevating five jets of water to a height of sixty feet.  

Under Stanislas the original layout of the formal gardens was retained with additional planting, fountains, water features and, in particular, further statuary. (Pierre Boyé comments: "A nature which was already constrained was tormented more."[Boyé (1910), p. 65]).  The marshland which still surrounded the Grand Canal was reclaimed and and the Park extended to the north and east. It was in these peripheral areas that Stanislas was able to show his originality by siting splendid new garden structures.

What remains?

The restoration of the modern park, which is still ongoing, aims to reproduce the formal parterres and surrounding "bosquets" as they appeared during the reign of Duke Leopold, the time when the gardens are best documented.

The Châteaux of King Stanislas - Lunéville

For Stanislas, former King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine, landscape architecture was a consuming passion.  At Lunéville and in a series of smaller châteaux, he created innovative vistas and fanciful pleasure pavilions, all of which, sadly, have now disappeared, almost without trace.  

There is a growing academic literature concerning Stanislas's sources of inspiration, his contribution to the history garden design and the possible wider philosophical agenda of his work.  This post, and those which follow, are just a few basic notes on Stanislas's residences and gardens, and (where relevant) what remains today.

At Lunéville itself Stanislas's alterations to the palace were limited. The interior configuration changed little from the time of Leopold - though the furniture and most of the fittings, having been carried off to Vienna, necessarily needed replacing.  Details of Stanislas's decor are difficult to reconstruct since the contents of the palace were systematically dismantled and sold at the time of his death.  Only the a few  inventories survive to provide clues. In addition a small number of items were pre-empted for the French crown and can be traced in French national collections.

The following description is translated from Pierre Boyé's study "Les Châteaux du roi Stanislas",  which was first published in the Revue Lorraine illustrée in 1907: 

View of the Château de Lunéville from the courtyard in the mid-18th century (from the Recueil of Emmanuel Héré)

A Day in the life of King Stanislas

So much of the pleasure of history lies in discovering the little details of lost lives!  In the case of King Stanislas we are fortunate to be able to profit from the thoroughly researched and stylishly presented accounts of the early 20th-century Lorraine scholar Pierre Boyé. The following evocation of Stanislas's daily routine is translated/abridged from an article of his, which first appeared in Le Pays lorrain for 1932.

Reference

Pierre Boyé, "La journée du roi Stanislas", Le Pays lorrain: revue régionale bi-mensuelle illustrée, 1st January 1932, p.97-120.  

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6579594x/f121.item#

Attributed to Nicolas de Mirbeck, Stanislas smoking his pipe. First half of the 19th c. Musée lorrain. 
 http://journaldedurival.fr/html/galerie.html

Early morning routines

Let us allow ourselves to be transported into the the bedchamber of the King, whose apartments at Lunéville occupy the wing of the château overlooking the Parc des Bosquets. The windows are the third and fourth from the north-east corner of the building, on the ground floor. There is a view, beyond the terrace, of the valley of the river Vezouze and of the hills of Jolivet.  It is not yet five o'clock in the morning in summer, six o'clock in winter, when the prince rises. Having said his prayers, he drinks a simple cup of tea or his preferred bouillon-blanc... Now he is smoking his pipe.

King Stanislas in Lorraine

Portrait of Stanislas by Jean-François Foisse dit Brabant (1708-1763) 
Acquired by the Musée du Château de Lunéville  in 2016.

Stanisław Leszczyński, King of Poland and latterly Duke of Lorraine and Bar, was one of those marvellous, larger-than-life 18th-century characters.  His character seems to span the whole gamut of 18th century sensibilities, from the remote central European worlds of Baroque piety, mechanical marvels and Court dwarves to the brightly-lit rationalism of the philosophes.