Château de Méréville
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The Château de Méréville, in the valley of the Juine, France, is the rival of the Désert de Retz as two of the most extensive landscape gardens provided with follies and picturesque features— parcs à fabriques— made in the late eighteenth century, early examples of the Romantic landscape garden. it survives, partially dismantled.
The château was rebuilt for the financier Jean-Joseph de Laborde, one of the richest financiers of the Ancien Régime, on designs of Bélanger, whose plans for the park threatened to commit the marquis to too extensive expenses. The two parted company in May 1786, and Laborde commissioned the painter Hubert Robert, "Robert-les-ruines" to carry out the plan.
Laborde bought Méréville, as the last of his country houses, in 1784, with the intention from the start of rebuilding a château that had been built in 1768 for the conseiller du roi Jean Delpech on the remains of a medieval fortress. It was provided with modest formal gardens formed as regular parterres, which the painter Hubert Robert transformed into a landscape of open meadow and belts of trees contained within a wide bowl, which became dotted with eye-catching features with a few years.
